I’ve been daily driving Pop!_OS for about two years. I’ve had to troubleshoot and look up how to solve problems here and there, but it has largely been pain free. About eight months ago I had to dual boot Windows 10 because my wife wanted to play Hogwarts and for the life of me I couldn’t get Linux to stream to the client connected to the Xbox controller and TV upstairs.
Well, today she goes to boot up the game, and the lag is beyond terrible. None of the settings I try change anything, and even trying Sunshine/moonlight instead of Steam Link is only a bit better. I decided to try booting the game in Linux, and lo and behold, the game is once again liquid smooth via Steam Link client, and whatever issues I ran into 8 months ago are gone.
I’m not used to Windows being the OS I have issues with.
Same, but I switched even earlier, back in 2010 or so. Gaming sucked, but there were still a few decent games released with Linux support before Steam on Linux became a thing (e.g. Minecraft). My main issues were WiFi (bought an Intel card to fix it) and sound (messed with settings until that worked), mostly because my laptop was a POS HP. But once it was set up, it was trouble free.
Fast forward to 2013, I got my second laptop (ThinkPad) and had zero issues with Linux and gaming got better (Steam for Linux was a thing). In 2018 when Proton was a thing, I built a nicer PC to play games with, and selection has only gotten better.
I haven’t ever needed to mess with sound since 2010, Wi-Fi has gotten better even on crappy cards, and everything is so stable on the rolling release distro I use (Tumbleweed), so I really don’t see where this “Linux is hard” stuff comes from. You literally install the OS, install your apps, and you’re done. Almost no fiddling as long as you get the right graphics drivers installed (and you don’t need to do that if you get AMD). Laptops with switching graphics are probably still an issue, but imo you really shouldn’t be buying a laptop for gaming. A decent desktop PC is something like $1k if you have zero parts, and a few hundred every few years to stay current in the mid range, which is where you’ll be on a laptop anyway.