I consider this argument irrelevant in 2026. The average “full” distro is pretty much plug and play, Ive done nothing but install Steam on my Fedora install and game extensively.

This was not the case even 5 years ago, which is when “gaming” distros were an ok idea and these distros started. By now, the niche they aimed to serve has been largely closed by legacy distros.

No in the sense of convenience, optimization, out-of-the-box features etc.

Because installing Steam (which bundles proton) is soooo inconvenient…

CachyOS is greatly optimized and truly does increase your FPS compared to other distros (and by quite a lot, like 10-15% on average from what I’ve experienced!)

…which distros and games are you comparing because this is not a universal experience… It strongly depends on the game and personal config, no single distro is better than others fps-wise, as benchmark averages keep proving.

Gamers Nexus made a good video on Linux benchmarks if you feel like learning.

How many use Fedora?

Between these two, Cachy.

If choice is open: Fedora.

“Gaming” focussed distros are often a worse choice imo, because they offer zero performance benefit, are bloated in an attempt to bundle drivers out of the box, are harder to troubleshoot because worse documentation, and the preinstalled configs can cause headaches.

“Gaming” distros are cringe, ineffective gimmicks.

Windows is great! Unless you value privacy…or RAM… or Bandwidth efficiency…or easy networking… or owning your system

Ill put it this way; me and a mate switched to Linux as our main drivers at roughly the same time. Both of us have a background in development (him more), I switched to Fedora, he to Cachy.

It is now roughly two years later. He has switched his distro multiple more times. Im still on Fedora because it just works.

Arch based distros are for tinkerers and customisers. Sure it can just work too, but if you dont tinker then theres no real point/ advantage.