2024 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop, at least for my boyfriend. He’s running Windows 7 right now, so I’ll be switching him to Ubuntu in a few days. Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.
There’s a bit of controversy regarding Ubuntu that I don’t need to get into but Fedora and Pop!_OS are also really good for Proton support. Ubuntu will work fine but I just prefer not to use it. Maybe you could let him try out the live environment for a couple distros to see what he might like in terms of UI.
I second popos and mint. I love fedora but if he is a gamer you want something that will just work (navida built in or a very easy one click mechanism to get it). If he has to research PPAs and installing rpmfussion it will get all too hard very quickly. Also do some expectation setting before hand, research what games he plays work on linux, better he finds out now rather than after 2 hours of pain or getting band for “hacking” because of proton triggered an anti-cheat thing.
Edit: I run fedora on all my machines except my gaming rig which is popos. Fedora works too but popos is hassle a free experience.
