Linux Mint, Wine Bottles/Steam, 3 years, never had any issues, but I mostly run older games. I cant speak for newer games or competitive multi player games

Just… don’t. Non-technical people should consider consoles, not PCs. Not even with Windows (which is actually harder to use than some Linux distros). If you want to game together with them, just get them an Xbox. It has much more games with cross play than a PlayStation

I’ve been on Pop_OS for 4 years and I’ve used Bazzite and Endeavor on my other computers for a few months. My only issues have been with nvidia drivers (not so much of a problem anymore) and some of the propriety hardware in my laptop being funky. I’d say, honestly, if they can handle Windows they can probably handle any mainstream distro. If all they use is Steam and a browser, anything will suffice. I’d personally lean toward Bazzite as I doubt they can break it and it comes set up for gaming already. If they game with anything outside Steam, teach them how to use Lutris. The Bazzite forums and wiki pages are also great, albeit some are a bit technical, although I doubt they’ll need it if they are very tech illiterate anyway.

I’ve been using Zorin OS for about 6 months (first on my laptop and now on my newly bought gaming desktop) and I’m very happy with it! Didn’t really have any big issues (so far) with compatibility. I also find it very user friendly in terms of Windows lookalike. Gaming wise, I’ve been using heroic games launcher for non steam games and steam for steam games and I have to say I didn’t expect it to be so easy and straightforward

I’ve been on pop!_os for 4ish years now, and in that time I had like… 3 issues with it, which is way less than I had with windows lol

Honestly if you’re picking one bazzite, mint, pop! and any of the others that are considered beginner friendly will probably be equally fine ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

I’m using ChimeraOS after using Bazzite and running into crashes a lot. It’s been about 2 months but no issues so far. I still search the web for stuff fairly often just because there’s so much you can do, like set up Emudeck, modding games (I’ve been playing FF7 after setting up Seventh Heaven and it’s been pretty fun), and I’ve also added a YouTube TV shortcut that runs in Firefox with uBlock for no ads. At this point I don’t have any complaints about it and it really does feel like a console-like experience.

I would recommend Mint over PopOS if that ends up being the choice, but Bazzite is probably the safest choice here. Both Cinnamon and Plasma should be pretty easy to navigate for someone used to Windows. Nobara is great, but personally I would stay away from distros with so few maintainers (only GE?). GE is an amazing dev and has done some great things for gaming on linux, but the chance of having to switch distros sooner or later is fairly large. If you don’t mind helping them with that, then I don’t think you can go wrong with Nobara either. Personally I currently run CachyOS with KDE Plasma and it’s been super solid for my use case including gaming, but I would not recommend any Arch-based distros to “the kind of person who needs help if their TV is set to the wrong input” even if it is quite beginner friendly and stable. But I also keep Windows around on a separate drive regardless for the times when Linux isn’t the right tool for the job, most notably because a lot of competitive games do not run on linux as they require kernel level anti-cheat (https://areweanticheatyet.com/). If the person you are referring to have no interest in those kinds of games, then that becomes a non-issue, but if their favourite game is something like Valorant or Fortnite then Linux simply isn’t a good choice for them yet. That is also true for some Windows-exclusive applications. Most applications have good alternatives or can run fine through something like Bottles or Lutris, but some don’t.

Otherwise, most games typically work fine (https://protondb.com/). Some work flawlessly without having to do anything. Some only require minor tweaks like setting a launch parameter or selecting a specific proton version. Those I believe would be acceptable, if not perhaps a little frustrating for such a person, but there are also a lot of games that run but can have issues of varying degrees that you can’t do anything about. They are almost always good enough, but sometimes those issues can be significant. What I suspect would be a killer is that some games may stop working after an update which requires further tweaking or simply staying broken until either the game devs or proton devs fixes it.

Linux gaming has gotten really good and continues to get better. Currently, I’d agree with what most of the other responses here have been and say Mint or Pop!_OS

This doesn’t help for the current build you’re setting up and I’m not suggesting to wait for it, but for the future I’d suggest also to keep an eye on SteamOS and when Valve eventually releases it for people to just download and install on whatever machine, it’s likely going to be the best option for this kind of scenario

I’ll second Linux Mint Cinnamon. My understanding is it is designed to look/function as close to Windows as possible to help people transition away from Windows.

It was my first Linux distro migrating from Windows, and overall it’s been a fairly decent transition.

1. Linux Mint Cinnamon
2. About 2, maybe 3 years. Time’s a bit fuzzy.
3. There was some, I’ll leave some tips below.
4. Nothing specific.

-Check out Protondb.com. It’s a website where you can search for games to see their compatibility rating with Linux OSes, along with any tinkering/troubleshooting tips other users have done.

-Once you install Steam, go to the Settings menu, select Compatibility, and select an option for “Default compatibility tool”. This global setting means you would not have specifically select a Proton version for each game you play.

-I found that sometimes Steam would not launch from the toolbar. I have no issues launching it from the terminal window (literally launch Terminal, type the word ‘steam’, and hit Enter)

I would genuinely not recommend Linux at all for someone who “needs help if their TV is set to the wrong input”. Just being completely honest there.

But if you’re absolutely set on it, probably Mint.

Edited to add:

1. Currently using Cachyos.
2. Few months.
3. Very often.
4. Too many to list. I’ll put it this way, I’ve started an ongoing library of issues and how I fixed them.

I think what matters more for a beginner is the desktop environment (DE). For someone coming from Windows I recommend using KDE Plasma for a DE. Ever since Plasma 6 it has become one of the best DE out there.

I’ve used:

• Mint : Solid, easy, but runs Cinnamon as a DE, which is OK and looks nice but lacks functionality for multiple displays. You can switch it to KDE Plasma but it is unofficially supported and can only run Plasma 5 which is was not a mature version IMO. It is glitchy and lacks the functionalities that makes Plasma 6 complete. Ultimately if you are using a single monitor Mint is a great choice.

• OpenSUSE Tumbleweed : It runs Plasma 6 out of the box. It also allows you to easily set up BTRFS Snapshot (a solid and easy to use recovery mode should something break your install) and encryption right at the install setup. If I remember well, Mint also has that support. It was remarkably stable for a rolling release distribution but I did have to use the Snapshot rollback a few times, mostly because NVidia kept messing up its driver updates. It is also a slightly oddball distro so you might sometimes encounter something that needs a minor workaround or require slightly different commands to work, something I always found a solution to with a quick internet search. The rolling release also means there are tons of updates coming out almost every day, which gets annoying after a while. Their package manager (zypper) is also relatively slow, not supporting parallel downloads yet. They are currently testing a Slow Release version (as opposed to Tumbleweed which is the running release version) that would tame it down but it’s not officially released yet.

• I’m now running Fedora KDE and I’m happy with it. It is easy to install and it just works. It is relatively mainstream so things work better. It is also very stable. The caveat being that the installation process doesn’t include any support for easily setting up BTRFS snapshots and encrypted home folder. There is however a very solid step by step instructions video on YouTube on how to set it up and explaining what and why you are doing at every step that I used to set it up for myself. It is quite the process however and the installer has changed slightly since the video was made so there was a bit of hunting around.

They all work relatively easily with their own pros and cons.

I haven’t tried it personally, but I think that Kububtu could also be an option for you . It is the KDE Plasma version of the most popular Linux distribution.

IMO as long as you don’t pick something like Arch and don’t mind doing a few quick web searches when you have questions it should be fine.

What distro are you using for gaming?

I use Secureblue, though I’d rather recommend normal Fedora

go through their list of games on protondb to see if linux would be a good fit, it might not be, depending on their library.

you’ve got a nice ‘short list’ of distributions to evaluate. i’d recommend setting each up yourself on a spare system to see how ‘point and click’ they are in setting-up, running, and updating the games they play.

also keep in mind the more hoop-jumping and manual configurations you need to do, the greater the chance of something breaking–like during os or wine-related updates. those kinds of issues are the ones your friend will be relying on you to fix for them so you definitely want to minimize the chances of that happening.

My son, 14, is on Bazzite now after using Pop!_OS for 5 years. He specifically requested it after using it at my office and seeing how well the Logitech steering wheel he uses works in Forza Horizon 5. He’s decent with tech, to the point that his teachers called on him to help with their problems during middle school, so maybe not the best example.

My daughter, 11, is on Pop!_OS. She’s currently at the tech level you describe, though sometimes she forgets to turn the power strip on, making me think she may be slightly below that. Her PC has been on that distro for a good 2 years, though she really only plays Minecraft, watches YouTube videos, and does her homework with OnlyOffice. Zero tech-related complaints from her, once she’s logged in she’s able to do what she needs with little to no assistance.

After stints in EndeavourOS and AlmaLinux I’ve settled on Kubuntu 24.04 LTS. I needed something stable with zfs in its official repo, so I don’t risk losing access to the big volume that contains all my raw video footage after a kernel update. The experience has been about as unremarkable as possible, which is exactly what I was looking for.

All three of us are using nvidia GPUs, and have had no trouble with drivers in the slightest. I use mine for gaming and video editing using DaVinci Resolve Studio, and while I was looking for as unremarkable an experience as possible, I’ve been using Linux since around 1996, so my tech experience doesn’t align with what you’re looking for; however, if this means anything, I’d switch my 85-year-old father with dementia to Linux Mint without worrying that he wouldn’t know his way around.

I’ve been using Linux Mint for the last…eight years? I think? Anyway, it’s been great for gaming and if you want a minimum of fussing about, I would just install Steam and use Proton for compatibility. It’s by far the easiest and most tinker-free gaming experience for Linux - at least in my experience. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to really research and tinker with any annoying issues. protondb.com has been extremely helpful in checking the compatibility of a certain game for Linux and even offers tips and tricks to make the fussier games work.