Recommend the one you use yourself so you are able to help them in the best way possible.

Definitely not bazzaite, it has lots of unremovable bloatware and since it doesn't have native package manager it will be a problem. For gaming i propose cachyos, it focuses a lot on performance in games. They have their own proton, kernel and they even had their own browser

Fedora KDE.

Steam and Heroic work fantastic on it.

Has its own App Store for searching for stuff.

Looks similar-esque to Windows so getting around is less painful.

Bazzite 100%. It's the best out of the box gaming distro, and bonus points for immutability (not that your friend needs to know what that is).

I'd actually recommend whatever it is that you use, OP. Having a friend who is intimately familiar with your distro is way more helpful than one that's theoretically even better but you have limited support for. If they want to make the jump later, they can always do what I did and somehow accidentally become an arch (btw) linux guy after a year in the ecosystem (goddamnit how did this happen, i just wanted to keep using my old craptop, not become a thigh high socks guy).

edit: I'm reading that you're also an archfreak, so I'd suggest Manjaro instead. It's got an easier learning curve and guis, but is arch-based.

I'd say Bazzite but I would warn him (and since he's a developer already it might not be a big deal) if he's looking to do any sort of dev work or whatever with Bazzite then prepare to utilize stuff like distrobox, flatpaks, etc to accomplish stuff like that.

That being said as a dev and gamer myself if my first linux experience was Bazzite I might get annoyed. Mint is a great first experience. when I originally tried it well over a year ago though I did have issues with my Nvidia GPU on it and gaming wasn't super great BUT it's been awhile since I've used mint so that may have changed.

Honestly I would suggest start with Mint and just drive it for a couple weeks. If he likes it but feel it's limited for some things then that's when he can expand out to different distros. And like I said maybe gaming on Mint has improved since I last used it. But if he's comfortable with running distrobox and containers then Bazzite is fine.

Mint for the community support. He'll have tons of resources if he runs into anything and you're not available. As a dev he should be resourceful in that regard.

But definitely check the kinds of games he's playing. Modern multiplayer games will be a big hurdle if they're not steam verified.

In order of ease of use; Nobara (Fedora based), popOS (Mint/Ubuntu based), cachyOS (Arch based, easy enough to use but might be overwhelming because of the amount of linux jargon going on) over bazzite, depending on your friend ability and wish to tinker around with his OS.

I have had problems even dragging dropping files across apps in bazzite and other immutable distros like bluefin. If your friend is interested in tinkering just a little bit then he will be be banging his head across a wall with bazzite. The community support for these relatively new immutable distros is also quite bad when it comes to edge cases.

He should start with Mint, learn the system in general, and then move to Bazzite, CachyOS, Pika or Nobara, which are more game centric.

I think Bazzite is the "easiest". But I think it would be very difficult to tinker for someone not used to Linux. It's the plug and play option. For me the fact that bazzite tries to be immutable is a very good plus for stability on the long run. And somehow fits well for gaming on Linux. The drawback is that these immutable distro are hard to tinker with if you dont have experience with immutable package managers and so on.

CachyOS has maybe a more traditional structure but should offer good performance too.

There is also Nobara and Pop OS.

I'm on PoPOS but it's too recent for me to give feedback for gaming. But it should work well too.

I use CachyOS for over a year. Mainly for playing.

he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.

Of the two options you gave, I’d go with Mint. If your friend runs into a problem, it would probably be easier to diagnose the issue since it’s just Ubuntu/Debian under the hood.

Once they get used to it, they can try other gaming specific distros if they want to try to get a little more performance.

CachyOS

I do not have first hand experience, but have been told that while Bazzite is excellent for gaming, the immutable nature of complicates matters when it comes to software development, dev tools and stuff of that nature.

Bazzite has newer drivers, ditto for CachyOS Handheld Edition for another SteamOS clone.

If he's a dev, he probably is able to follow this guide:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide

The result is a system, that has virtually every package you can imagine in the aur, always the newest packages - which is quite important for gaming performance and a really slim system.

For the gaming part I recommend Gamescope:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamescope

As desktop Plasma is a good choice for beginners. However I personally use Sway.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KDE#Plasma
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Sway

Always start with Bazzite for gaming. If you decide you want more control, switch to Fedora KDE. When you want to explore whats out there, put everything that interests you on a Ventoy thumbdrive. I don’t recommend Mint for new users primarily because it doesn’t officially support KDE Plasma.

Can recommend nobara. Has all the game focused stuff bazzite has but it’s just regular old fedora with the dnf package manager underneath.

Since gaming is the first priority, does he play competitive multiplayer games? Better check their anticheat state first, as some just flat out deny linux, full stop.

I have no real recommendation in regards of distro, but afaik either should do.

And what I gather, Bazzite has package management 'ujust' https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/ - but beyond this hastily googled doc, I have no idea, never used Bazzite.

I went with mint, had mininal troubles getting gaming setup and still a good none gaming experience. Show him how to customize his desktop a bit i really enjoyed trying cool themes to fit the gaming vibe.

I haven't had too much issues with Bazzite for general use. I still use windows for work, so there's some things I haven't tried setting up and have no clue how different they'd be on an immutable vs a mutable OS.

I've used Mint before (like 10 years ago) and somehow it kept breaking (I'm sure I somehow caused it, but I only knew enough to break things and not enough to understand how I was breaking them). 🤷‍♀️ For most people, I'd think how Bazzite works would be acceptable. For some power users, the immutable OS aspect might be annoying, but I think that's mostly an issue for people who are coming from a different Linux distro (it did bother me at first and I did consider switching to something like PopOS) or people who want to run fairly dated or obscure software (granted, VMs are sometimes already necessary for that - at a previous job, we had to use windows 95 VMs to run a specific version of software).

I have been using bazzite for over a year, and I am very happy with it. It works very well for gaming, and I have had zero troublehooting outside of getting some mod managers to work.

But immutable distros are different, in general you can't just install GUI programs if it has no flatpak option. (for CLI stuff there are distroboxes). There are ways, but depending on what you want to do other than gaming, I would check first. Also there have been some episodes of drama among the maintainers, which makes me worry a bit about the future of the distro.

Mint is a great distro too, and from what I hear it for sure it will work well for gaming. I'd say the main differences are:

Bazzite:

• immutable, so you never have a broken setup
• lots of gaming setup done out-of-the-box

• some package installation restrictions
• some maintainer drama

Mint:

• flexible to use various methods of package installation
• No drama (?)

• Not immutable, so it can break if you fiddle with stuff and are careless
• no out-of-the-box gaming setup (but it is not a giant project to setup)

Bazzite is install and use. Perfect out the box experience

I built a new gaming computer a month ago. After a couple hours of research, I chose Nobara. It was by far the easiest experience I have ever had setting up an OS and everything has worked flawlessly so far. Even my wife who isn't tech savvy at all has no issues using it. I cannot recommend it enough to new users who want an easy time gaming. I've been a linux user for almost twenty years, but I just wanted something easy that didn't need tinkering and Nobara delivered.