https://fedoraproject.org/kde/

https://getaurora.dev/en

Mint is a good transition from windows

Something listed in the top 10 or so on https://distrowatch.com/. Personally I like one of the Debian based distros.

Currently we use Ubuntu and Debian. Ubuntu would be the better of the two for beginners.

The distrowatch beginners list is: https://distrowatch.com/search-mobile.php?category=Beginners#simple

It’s 2025, if you’ve got the space to dual boot, you’ve got space for snapshots. There’s no reason not to set them up. Btrfs, ZFS, LVM, pick your poison. Disk is cheap, your time isn't.

And if “simple stuff” is breaking your system, that tells me three things:

1. You’re still using apt-get instead of apt

2. You’re ignoring dependency warnings

3. You’re probably not fully understanding the commands you’re running — so RTFM

So yeah, I will be telling you to use Mint, with at LEAST daily snapshots.

Keep to popular distros. I'd personally recommend Pop os or fedora. Opensuse is up there too just never clicked with me when I was a new users.

I actually have started to discourage people using Ubuntu because of forced snap packages and multiple software store GUIs. It has led to a lot more confusion for new users even though Ubuntu is supposed to be user friendly.

So... do it?

Now to the question which distro, honestly it does not matter YET!

You probably don't even know what a distro is (no offense) but what you did highlight clearly are the needs, namely :

• playing games
• popular
• not Mint because somehow it breaks (would be VERY important to understand why though)

... so that actually narrows things down quite a bit.

The most popular distribution are the easiet to find (I'm on Debian and SteamOS so I use Arch BTW) and that's a safe choice indeed. Playing games does not narrow things down much as most distro, if not all, do not prevent against playing game and IMHO the optimization specific to gaming are pretty much pointless in most cases.

Your edit point that you are trying a distribution already so yes, please, do go for it. I do suggest though that WHEN things go wrong, like it did with Mint, you take the time to understand WHY. This in itself will help you to either switch to another distribution and arguably more importantly what even is a distribution and finally which one of the remaining ones (if you do actually switch rather than fix) are more appropriate for you.

Finally my last recommendation is to back up your data. That's what IMHO make the difference between having fun distro hopping versus pulling hair out stressing that your last game save, or work notebooks, will not be deleted.

Have fun learning!

Fedora or UwUntu.

ZorinOS maybe ?

Bazzite is great for gaming !

Nobara too.

Try Manjaro. It will be the easiest to set up and find software that hasn't been deliberately packaged for your setup.

The age old question. You have to understand that Linux the kernel is made in such a way that anything built on top of it will always require way too much from the user. It feels like something made from programmers for programmers, just like how UNIX was designed. No distro will be able to change that. Windows is packed with bandaids to make it behave closer to what users expect, but anything that comes from UNIX has it's focus in making the code nice, not making ordinary users happy necessarily.

So picking a distro is entirely a choice on how you wanna interact with the kernel's interfaces, but they're still the same interfaces. No pretty UI will change that.

Just make sure that the distro you choose has a mature community behind it and that packages are being actively maintained. Make sure that if you file a bug report it will get some attention. That's the only thing you should care about in a distro, everything else is flashy nonsense.

Edit: Also as you can see by the replies to my comment, Linux is kind of a cult, so beware of that.

Linux Distro made to accommodate Windows Users by being as similar as is reasonable in UI and organization: AnduinOS.

If you try it, use 1.3, as you are not an enterprise use case.

I used Mint on my previous system but currently rolling CachyOS personally. Bazzite was a close contender for me.

I have to give it that the Fedora distros are a slightly bit superior to Ubuntu variants but for those that value some degree of not favoring corporate US (IBM/Red Hat) that provides AI resources for Israel's military to do what it is doing... Myself I tried to like Mint, I really did... but could not... not just it is old-fashioned looking but has limitations with scaling and others.

Now, I do recognize for the initiators is it great! Now, for those that find Mint ugly I recommend TuxedoOS... I find it as good as Kubuntu but without its known limitations with flatpaks. Yes, TuxedoOS was created for Tuxedo laptops but they left it open to use it with others so no problems at all and very well maintained. Now, you may want remove the Tuxedo app that they installed just to free some resources... a 10-seconds thing to do. Drawback is servers in Germany so a bit slower updates than usual for most.

theres a new one made by a microsoft enginer as a hobby project called Anduin OS it is very simmilar to windows based on ubuntu it can be downloaded at https://www.anduinos.com/ and a video by mental outlaw can be found at https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=bQAUFgS657w i personally never tried it and it is a hobby project but it looks promising