With the advances in gaming on Linux in recent years, it is so tempting to switch full time. I would absolutely love to, but I am a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber and it is where I play a lot of my games on PC. I know you can use the cloud version, but I cannot stomach streaming games in their current state, so it is a no go. A large portion of my Steam library is compatible, but anytime I have done an install I end up giving in and going back to Windows for games.
You can always dual boot and use Linux for whatever you like it for. Sadly Windows is still the go to thing for gaming, since it’s the target platform for 99.99% of software and especially games.
I tried Pop!OS and I liked it a lot, but I wasn’t big on the built-in store for downloading apps as it felt a bit clunky to me. Still, it’s a solid option. Kubuntu was a pretty decent one too that I tried.
For me I found myself going back to Windows because of hardware incompatibility. I know that of course you either need to be really good at building compatibility yourself or scouring the Internet for a solution someone else already found, but unfortunately it was one of those cases where searching ended up with those results where it was from several years ago and they just said “I figured it out” without added context.
I just did, not for the gaming capabilities as I’m not a big gamer myself but because WSL malfunctions pissed me off. Moving to Pop!_OS after considering Nobara.
Gaming on Linux has grown leaps and bounds and it’s only getting better. Game Pass Ultimate though, I’m guessing you’re gonna have a rough time. That’s built for Window’s ecosystem. So more than likely that’s going to be a very sore point. The streaming Game Pass can and does work on Linux, but if you’re against that then Linux might not be for you.
Steam has gotten to the point on Linux where it’s basically just install and run, as long as you have compatibility for all games turned on. Very very very few games haven’t worked for me or even require little tinkering anymore. That being say I pretty much really only play Indie games.
This is why I just dual-boot. Keep Windows on a short leash and basically just have it for the rare instances where there’s something I really want to play and somehow can’t on Linux.
So one thing that might be worth looking into is virtual machines.
Currently on my desktop I run a variant of Arch (Endeavor I think) where I primarily do my gaming , but for any highly incompatible games, or Game Pass games, I have a virtual machine running Windows that uses pass-through to pass my graphics card through to the virtual machine for games I can’t play on Linux. I also use CPU pinning to ‘pin’ 10 of my 12 CPU cores to the virtual machine to reduce potential overhead.
Works really well, might be an option for you, although it’s not super easy to setup. I’ve tried passthrough on PopOS as well before, but it wasn’t as performant, and Arch Wiki provides a ridiculous amount of super useful guides for doing just about anything, including setting this up.
Edit: Otherwise in terms of daily driver, I love Fedora, and likely won’t move away anytime soon on my laptop.
I’ve been Linux fulltime for years, settled on Pop!_OS for it’s excellent NVIDIA graphics integration. As far as game compatibility goes, check your games on ProtonDB. Even if they don’t have a Linux native version, the Proton Compatibility Layer may let you play your “windows only” games on Linux without streaming.
