Now that windows 10 is end og life soon I want to update my gaming PC to Linux but I am very unsure on how to approach it, even though I'm pretty proficient in Linux. I daily drive Debian 12 on my laptop and have Ubuntu server and truenas on two other devices but those are all for very different use cases than gaming. I'm not afraid of the terminal (I actually often prefer it over GUI) but since this setup is for gaming for both me and my girlfriend I want this experience to be as easy and hands off low maintenance as possible.
My desktop is about 6 years old and consist of an MSI Tomahawk B450 motherboard with an Ryzen 5 2600X and an Asus Nvidia 1660ti and 16GB of RAM. I just recently installed 1TB nvme SSD so I have a decent amount of capacity available, but I'm generally not interested in dual boot since I have bad experience from the past with windows suddenly deciding to take over and ruin it all. For temporary testing it is of course an option but I really don't like it due to the maintenance of it.
Important games for me is Sims 2, 3 and 4 (with almost all expansions packs on Sims 4) and they are currently purchased through the EA game store. I also have a few steam games and Minecraft but I'm fairly sure they all work decently since I've tried on my laptop.
I use steam remote play to stream the desktop to a MacBook on the local network when Sims is played and it works quite well at the moment and it is important that it continues to work or an alternative remote play function to mac is easily available.
Sims is my biggest worry to get working since my girlfriend is playing it a lot and with a lot of custom content (mostly just assets) added along all the expansion packs. Rebying everything through steam is not an option (way too expensive) so I really hope there is a way to get EA GameStore to work without too much effort using wine or some other workaround.
I hope you guys have some ideas on how to approach this and keep the most important functions for me up and running.
I agree. If you're a noob, and want the smoothest path, then Bazzite is the way.
I however, started on Ubuntu originally and you will have to learn the apt repos and install all this on your own. I'm now on Arch which makes you learn more the inner workings of Linux.
So if you want to progress, be sure to consider all the other distros out there too.
cachyos is easiest way to arch, I found the install to be easier than bazzite, its all graphical, very straightforward, just works, imo gnome with extensions is superior to plasma rnow if you want a clean modern look, plasma can get you one too, gnome just feels more crafted. Plasma feels more like an easily tinkerable windows ui, imo in a year itll be nice.
Reason why I talk about gnome and plasma more than distros is that reslly decides your day to day a bit more, bazzite gnome vs plasma or if cachyos you can have both, requires some tinkering. I go back and forth but gnome is the one where I actually end up using my laptop more and feeling good about the look with minimal extensions/tinkering. Gnome without extensions is bottomtier tho imo, not much customization by default (to be fair extensions are built in and a default thing)
I see no reason to switch rnow, but atomic blue distros like bazzite should be safer long term and in general. Backups, fixes issues on reboot, stable with tested updates, etc. You can change to another without losing your files/data. Can't easy effect settings, etc. Im a tinkerer tho, so cachy is superior, things that takes seconds would take minutes and workarounds on bazzite.
Bazzite comes with Distrobox pre-installed, so you can literally try every other distro with it lol