Ubuntu, broadly, is usually a good first distro. Lots of info available, Canonical support if that’s your style, etc. Studio has some bits that are useful for the music side, but not some that are good for the gaming side. Others would be the opposite. Don’t worry too much. Pretty much anything you can do on one distro you can do on another. It’s mostly picking what comes pre-installed versus what you have to install.

Long term, don’t worry about picking and sticking. Just try a few and see what feels best to you and your hardware. If you have a spare USB drive you can empty, put ventoy on it and a handful of live ISOs. You can get a quick poke at each and see whether one feels right.

No idea. Rome was never my bag. As far as OP, though, I can only guess they didn’t have quite your interest in the subject either.

Better for the fool maybe. Idiots being more visible helps everyone else avoid them.

Nero was in a position of power and hypothetically could have done something, hence the criticism of him for ‘fiddling while Rome burned.’ Are you suggesting the twenty-something year olds of this world have some power to turn things around?

Switched over someone I know just recently. No headaches. Video card worked without issue from the jump and they’ve been playing Fallout 76 on it with more stability than they ever had with Windows. I put it on my own machine a few months back, and it was the same. Smooth. Either I got double lucky or you got unlucky.

Bazzite. It was the absolute smoothest spin-up I have had in my distro hopping, and has been nice and stable the whole time. KDE gives lots of pretty options. Gaming stuff and Nvidia stuff is ready to go out of the box. Unless you need to be bleeding edge, which it seems you don’t, you’ll be just fine.

I tried multiple distros over the last year to find a good one to recommend to someone I know. My experience with mint was a mediocre startup followed by mediocre use for a few days, followed by a boot failure. Very disappointing from a distro I frequently hear recommended as a newbie-friendly option.

I literally just started trying out Ardour the other day. I’d say give it a try. All it’ll cost you is a little time.

That’s a lot to ask of one game these days. Last one that ticked those boxes for me was Pacific Drive.

And now that I’ve looked at an image of it I need a shower to get the dust off.

Definitely. It’s minimal effort and makes a game vastly wider in its appeal. PvP and PvE are very different experiences in any game. For one, I’ve never fought a bot in a PvE game which then felt the need to call me slurs for winning or losing. Also, I’ve never played a PvP game where I get the depth of strategy I can get against a real person.

If you aren’t wearing pants, is it still better to be wearing the top half of the tux or does your swinging wang negate the fancy?

I’ve been trying different flavors on my machines with Nvidia cards. It usually just works well enough for me. Did Garuda for a microsecond, mint for a moment, Ubuntu for a few, and am now trying Debian and Endeavour. I’ve honestly had more issues coming from arch peculiarities than from nvidia. Just give it a go if you have the drive space. It seems like there’s more of a question of how well your chosen flavor meshes with your chosen hardware than one of ‘can I even get this working?’