Linux Gaming

Stick to the main distros unless you have a specific reason to use a novel one. Despite its drawbacks, KUbuntu is great and I definitely recommend it. Once you find a thing or two you don't like about it, you can swap to a distro that does those things differently and you're off to the races :)

PS Linux can breathe new life into a laptop, but if apps are too intense for your hardware it won't magically give you more RAM.. With the exception of Minecraft Prism Launcher + Fabulously Optimized, then your Linuxtop turns into a NASA supercomputer

If you want to shake things up with an arch derivative you can try EndeavourOS, there are a lot of different DEs you can choose straight from the installer

KDE is surprisingly lightweight these days. Maybe try the Fedora KDE spin. Or if you need it even more light weight: the LXQt spin is also not bad.

One of the Fedora spins, or if you are feeling brave Fedora Silverblue or Fedora Kinoite.

I'd say give a few Arch-based distros a try, or just straight up Arch if you're feeling adventurous. Arch distros are just slim and speedy, which could be good for your old laptop. The new official archinstall tool makes it relatively easy compared to installing Arch the manual way, but if you're looking for more ease of use EndeavourOS is a great option.

MX Linux.

Imagine Linux Mint Debian edition, but it isn't green and there are a lot of useful GUI tools. It's also so near to actually being Debian that you can just install things meant for Debian on it. It also runs a backported kernel for modern graphics driver and chipset support so you get your stability and your performance all in one.

Since I began exploring Linux again for the first time in 20 years, I've tried a handful of distros. I'm... semi competent working in the command line, and here are my experiences.

Pop!_OS: comes with proprietary drivers for Nvidia cards! Neat! Some minor compositor issues with Nvidia and multi monitor support, but I hammered them out. Eventually the general glitchyness of the desktop environment and software center turned me off.

Fedora KDE: getting my laptop to handle multi monitor support, while still allowing high refresh gaming on the external monitor was a no go. I managed to install drivers from the command line, but Optimus, used to select power profiles and allow one monitor to have hardware acceleration while the laptop screen itself runs off the processor, would not function no matter what I did.

Nobara: hmmm. Fedora, but the aforementioned driver issues are solved out of the box, neat. But I hated the gnome based custom DE. they have other DE spins like KDE but I didn't try them.

Manjaro: Arch, but easier? It was pretty smooth, but too complicated for my tastes.

Linux Mint Cinnamon: Mint just fucking works. A graphical driver manager that automatically detects my GPU and lets me click what driver I want to use with no bullshit? Multi monitor support was easy. Gaming is easy. The software center is clean and smooth. No glitchyness anywhere. Cinnamon is beautiful and easy enough to customize if you want to rice it out. Mint isn't as sexy or interesting as some other distros, in fact it works so well for someone with slightly lower than intermediate Linux chops, that it's almost boring.

My vote is, try a few. But in the end, mint seems like where I'll come home to whenever the distro hop itch strikes again.

I'm a Linux vet who's been around the block. I've tried all the major distros, used Gentoo for a few years, Arch the same, and a bunch of smaller distros.

Nowadays, I just want my computer to start up and run my programs with as little fuss as humanly possible. I'm far too lazy to rice or optimize anything, and I have little patience to troubleshoot the next big awesome thing.

Consequently, I use Kubuntu with Wayland. It chugs along and does everything I need it to.

If your laptop is on the potato side I would personally avoid kde, it's much lighter now than it used to be but still heavier than other options. Mint looks good in my personal opinion and, again in my opinion, is a better alternative if compared to ubuntu, it's based on it but with some improvements. The default flavor comes with cinnamon, but if your laptop struggles it's also available with xfce, which even older machines should be able to handle.

Check out Fedora Silverblue.

I really think having a stateless root is the future of computing. Silverblue has a big focus on using Flatpak and containers to cover most use cases.

The only issue is the default Gnome would probably be too heavy for your hardware but (as others have mentioned) you can overlay KDE and use that instead.

Edit: as others have said below check out Kinoite for a Silverblue spin with KDE by default.

I'm not sure how lightweight Fedora is, but it's currently my favourite distro. The harder choice for me is the desktop environment, I'm currently using KDE, however Gnome looks more modern.

You can’t go wrong with KDE neon. Highly recommend it. You get all the latest KDE features with the stability of Ubuntu. Lots of Kubuntu users have all migrated already.

Fedora is a good choice. It is stable while being fairly up to date. The only issue is that (I think) proprietary drivers aren't included by default.

My vote goes to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It's a beautiful system, and the most stable rolling release I've ever had the pleasure of running. I've tried so many different distros, and I always end up coming back to OpenSUSE.

Linux Lite is worth a look, it's designed for old machines as well as folks moving over from Windows.

Edit: Porteus is another good lightweight distro to checkout. It's light enough to run off a USB but can also be installed on the hard disk. It has KDE, Xfce and Cinnamon environment options too.

Manjaro

I'm using pop os, but it I build a new PC I might switch to fedora or steamos

I'm using Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop on a Thinkpad older than yours, and everything works fine for me. I've seen somebody saying that the Xfce edition is slow for them, but maybe the MATE one is lightweight enough for you.

MX Linux would be my recommendation for older computers. It's Debian-based so it should be fairly familiar if you're used to *buntu-based stuff. Maybe Linux Mint XFCE but I've found it to be verrrry slow on my old Dell Inspiron.

Depending on your use any distro would be good for you..if you like KDE maybe you should choose a distro with it but again, depending on your use it might be heavy on your system.different Desktop environments don't really expand your horizons ..different distro do..so if you have already played with Ubuntu maybe you should choose a Red Hat based distro or maybe an Arch based ..both using KDE

I think Arch Linux could be for you. You can install it with archinstall script. It's relatively straightforward.

As someone who is also new to linux, they're all pretty simple to use. I honestly struggle to find any major differences in any distros other than the command to get applications not in the repo store. Personally I use pop os on wayland on an old macbook and the battery life had been stupendous. On desktop I'm on fedora 38. Gnome 44.1 has been extremely polished.

Regata OS is a gaming oriented customization of Opensuse Tumbleweed. I’ve been using it for a year without issues.

I've been playing with garuda's dr460nized gaming distro. It's, uh, a bit extreme with the neon theme but it does come with everything preloaded for game stores and whatnot.

Give it a peek if you're still looking.

https://garudalinux.org/downloads.html

I use KUbutu at work and have tinkered with Arch (and recently the arch-based Manjaro) for many years on personal computers.

In my opinion, setting up a desktop Arch install is more work than it's worth, but wrapping it behind Manjaro makes the experience much better and the Arch wiki is a treasure trove of information about all thinks Linux.

Ubuntu, regardless of flavor, is the boring white bread of Linux distros IMO. There's nothing really wrong with it, but it sure doesn't excite me in any way shape or form.

Not sure it's good as a daily distro: Nitrux. Debian based, QT based DE, waydroid is installed, appimage lover

I'm personally using Kubuntu because a lot of programs I like are built for Ubuntu already and while I'm fine with messing with building from source for some things, for most, I like my binaries prebuilt on a distro package service. Also I like KDE Plasma.