I can't believe that no one has asked you this question yet (fucking fanboys...):

Do you mind losing access to most features on your GPU, including (but not limited to): RTX HDR, Shadowplay, the Nvidia App, the Nvidia Control Panel and everything it offers, including the 3D Settings page?

If any of this matters to you, you may want to consider switching to an AMD GPU first before you consider Linux. Nvidia does not support it nearly as well as they support Windows. You get a driver that lets you run games, and that's about it.

Bazzite is a Fedora Atomic based immutable distro focused on gaming, this means...

• out of the box support for Nvidia cards
• ships with a lot of useful gaming utilities
• very hard to break as you should primarily be installing Flatpaks and can do rollbacks

Basically all modern Linux distros have virtualization support, so does Bazzite, of course. Actual performance differences between distros is also negligible, so feel free to choose whatever you like.

https://bazzite.gg/ if you're interested.

linux mint.

DO IT.

The only thing that kept me booting windows for gaming was destiny 2, which choses not to support running on linux.

The current expansion "edge of fate" is terrible though, so it's full time linux gaming for me.

Take Fedora, as you're already used to it. Steam handles Windows games for you. In 99% of cases they just work. Only games that do not run nowadays are games with unsupported kernel level anti cheat. Look at https://areweanticheatyet.com/ to see if your games are supported. A VM won't help you as that is usually blocked by such anti cheat as well.

If you do have a problem with a non-multiplayer game look at https://protondb.com/.

For games from GOG, Epic or Amazon use Heroic. For every other store you can add the launcher or just the game itself to Heroic.

Nobara is good, it's fedora but with better nvidia driver stuff out of the box.

Coming from a Steam Deck, I was really happy when I learned about Bazzite. I tried installing it and stuck with it for a few months now and I'm excited to have gotten rid of Windows. It's fast and works well out of the box. Plus I have the SteamOS experience without fuss.

Bonus points for you, it's Fedora based and easy to install on top if Fedora.

Notably I had tried Ubuntu before this and had issues with VRR and a couple of other things. Bazzite is built for this, and it works well.

IMO, basically any distro with fairly modern (fairly often updated) packages should do. Apart from some build/packaging differences it's all same software anyway. The gaming side of software gets updated fairly often, so that's why you'd probably want frequently updated packages.

"Gaming" distros are basically just selection of gaming specific packages installed as default, instead of lets say productivity apps. You can run VM's in gaming/studio/whatever distros

FWIW, I got 5800x3D, RTX3090 - so, "close enough" same system as you. At least same series cpu/gpu. Running Arch, and gaming has been pretty easy, haven't yet found a game which didn't work - that said, some occasional game has had odd stutters (Darktide, for one. But I haven't tested in months).

Getting things to run did get a bit more involved than "just click it". Some extra compatibility stuff (proton-ge-custom), launchers (lutris, heroic, because GoG Galaxy just refuses to work). Steam & steam-games tend to "just work", although actual native-linux games seem to have issues while running the windows-version of the same game on proton just work - WEIRD.

But overall, stuff works, and in case of issues it now just seems to be either disabling ntsync and/or wayland for specific games and gaming away.

Linux Mint Cinnamon was is my first Linux distro coming away from Win10, and I have no issues with it. Mint uses Ubuntu as its codebase, so it's essentially Ubuntu with a different desktop presentation/look/feel.

I use Nobara on my laptop which has rtx 3060 6gb with ryzen 7 5800h. Sure Nvidia sucks on every linux distro, but you will get many quality of life improvements when using linux instead of windows.

Btw, Nobara is just Fedora with some good gaming related chages.

Of course you should - Do a dual boot as a test on whatever rig you're currently using. Easy to undo and it costs you exactly zero.

Surprised I haven't seen Bazzite or Nobara recommended here, those are full desktop experiences with built in features for gaming. I use nobara because it has a version with pre-packaged Nvidia drivers.

Just use Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Mint if you want a hassle free, secure, and stable Linux distro that supports everything and works out of the box.

Don't use those gaming centric distros like Bazzite. It's not worth it. Don't use Arch or other bleeding edge distros unless you want to keep troubleshooting your system because of problems or vulnerabilities.

Take it from me. I've been using Linux since 2001 and Ubuntu based distros have always been the best choice for a secure stable OS.

There are a ton of distros that work well for gaming. I am currently running CachyOS. It was easy to get set up, runs smoothly, and I've been happy with it so far.

https://wiki.cachyos.org/configuration/gaming/

Hi I recommend against using an Arch based distro like manjaro or cachyOS ( arch by nature demands active maintenance ) also depsite the brand name ubuntu is a very bad place to start ( due to them forcing snap packages ). Go for something like fedora kde or bazzite, most of the app you need can come from flathub.

For games you got Steam, Heroic ( for epic games ), lutris ( for everything else ). You will have to quit the habit of hunting .exe file online, most of your apps will come from your store ( discover in your case ).

Vms will not let you bypass anti-cheat stuff so keep that in mind. Check for game compatibility on protondb if needed. Don't be afraid to ask question ( even dumbs one ).

What about Bazzite? It's fedora based and made for gaming. I've only tried it on handheld like steamdeck and rog ally but it's awesome, even better than steamdeck os.

Garuda dragonized gaming will get you everything out of the box and you can change the theme after. It will walk you through a lot with assistants, which is nice to learn things on an arch based distro. Its an easy switch from windows, plus, now I can use fish konsole htop and paru alright.

I see bazzite mentioned a lot here, but wasn't there a post here a while ago saying that it might stop existing if fedora pushes through with the decision to ditch 32bit support? Did they decide not to do it after all?

FYI: I have a rig similar to yours. I’m currently running Mint and have had no issues. I used to run Pop OS, but even after a fresh reinstall of their LTS, updates stopped working, so I recommend avoiding Pop OS.