Steam Deck

While Bazzite is gaming focused, it will still be a great non-gaming distro. The main things gaming distros do is include some optimizations, prioritize faster software updates, bundle in some programs like Steam, and usually try to be more new user friendly. There's also Fedora Silverblue, which is like the parent of Bazzite. It's more developer focused though, and may not be as new user friendly as Bazzite.

But as others have said, your biggest request is having the same desktop environment as SteamOS, which is the KDE desktop. This is available on nearly every Linux distro, so you can get that experience with any of them. KDE even has it's own official distro in the form of KDE Neon, which could honestly be a good choice for you if that's your main requirement. It's based on Ubuntu, which makes it easy to find help if you have an issue.

The biggest thing left to understand is that SteamOS and Bazzite are immutable distros, which means the system files are locked down. This makes those systems hard to break, and very reliable. However it can make installing some kinds of software harder. More tradition desktops like KDE Neon/Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora(non-silverblue) are not immutable. They will give your more options for installing software/etc, but there's a higher chance of breaking something if you start messing with system files.

If immutable sounds good, I'd recommend going with Bazzite still. If you want more freedom to customize your system and install software from outside of the discover store, I'd recommend KDE Neon.

The same folks who made Bazzite also have Aurora and Bluefin. Those are general purpose distros with the same ideas as Bazzite, just less gaming stuff bundled in. The difference between the two is just the desktop environment (gnome for bluefin, kde for aurora).

But even though Bazzite is focused on gaming, it is still a pretty good distro for general use too. The same stuff that enables windows games to run on it also help run any windows program just as well, so it might be a good pick if you use any software that only runs on windows.

Adobe support

Jokes aside, Adobe refuses to play nice with Linux. It likely won’t matter which distro you choose, because Adobe refuses to release a native Linux version. You can use Wine as a workaround, at least.

Then get Kinoite, it's like Bazzite minus the gaming presets.

Software support is basically identical across any Linux distro. It's not really a concern when choosing a distro to use. Of course some are easier to install stuff on than others.

The distro's marketing is gaming focused but the truth is there is not anything bad about their overall desktop experience. There is no difference between distros for blender and adobe support.

Apologies, I don't understand. Is any modern Linux distro lacking "general usability" or applications? Anyway, for Bazzite, there's a bunch of ways to install software. (Though I haven't used it myself.) I'm also not sure what you're looking for when you're saying "support". Good documentation? A helpful community? Continued active development?

Just because there's a strong focus on gaming doesn't mean the distro would suddenly do bad at everything else, especially.. general home/office use. Linux is good with that across the board. I hope I didn't misunderstand. Please explain.

Are these tools being bought buy Adobe more recently ? That could be an explaination why, but that's good to know thanks for sharing.

Same. I gave up on Bazzite (for the time being) the second time it just stopped updating. The first time, I had to rebase it entirely to get it to work for a while again. I wouldn't want to put a new person through that. I'm not sure why everyone has a hard-on for immutable distros "for beginners" suddenly.

There are stories like this for every distro, unfortunately.

This is not actually true, mint supports x.org hacks for those things, not natively and properly, for example, the way mixed refresh rates work is like this: lets say you have a 60fps and 120fps monitor, both will actually run at 120, but half will be culled on the 60, meaning much worse performance and battery life... this becomes exceptionally bad if they are not clean multiples, say a 144hz and 60.

fractional scaling works in a similarly hacky way, it renders at 2x and then downscales, as does mixed dpi, meaning you're paying the full rendering cost.

they kinda work, but these are terribly hacky workarounds that are impossible to avoid due to the fundamental nature of x.org. This is not something they can fix without wayland support, which will take forever to mature into usability because their dev speed is so slow.

really anything with KDE Plasma

Op might like the stability broihght by immutability

Lol, I will choose to trust this reply isn't an elaborate AI ploy. I'll definitely consider that, and you've already taught me a couple things 👍

Well I'm not aware of any Arch-based immutable distro besides SteamOS so it's kinda hard to give a perfect answer.