Linux Gaming

Imo any distro basically just works the same, I've never tried one of the "gaming" distros, but installing steam, proton and lutris is so straightforward that any distro will do imo. From there on it's just a matter of going onto protondb and figuring out tweaks for your games.

As for dual boot I highly recommend separate drives, windows likes to overwrite grub with every update if located on the same drive. From there on just do a basic Linux install and configure your bootloader to look for other bootable oses

https://nobaraproject.org/ Nobara is EXCELLENT. It took me weeks to tweak my last distro to get to the point that Nobara is out of the box, and GloriousEggroll sets it all up and keeps it updated for everyone.

As for dual booting, you should be able to follow any online guide (and the Nobara installer might even have an option for it). The only caveat is Nobara does NOT support secure boot, so you may have to disable that in your bios (you can google the benefits of secure boot, I find that for a stationary desktop in the hands of any reasonable user, it’s not necessary. Only reason I ever turn it on is to play Valorant on Windows 11 🙃)

While Linux Mint may not be designed specifically for game compatibility, it is quite user friendly. The default desktop environment (cinnamon) feels a lot like windows.
It behaves in much the same way as other distros for steam games (check protondb for compatibility). I can't say how well it works for other games as I haven't tried.

The Linux Mint installer is fairly intuitive and easy to use. There is an option to install alongside your existing OS, and the included GRUB bootloader will let you select which OS you want to boot each time you turn on your computer.

I've tried many different distros, but I keep coming back to Mint for it's user friendly feel, and simple customisation options.

No one suggests openSUSE Tumbleweed?
I use this distro as a workstation OS, laptop for newbie (my wife), for gaming (through steam client, but also with Heroic Game Launcher for GOG and Epic stores) and developing.
It's a rolling release, so I can get resonable updated kernel and graphics drivers, but it's also an enough stable distro.
Give it a chance ;-) And if you want a more stable release, instead of a rolling release, try openSUSE Leap.

Agree with other folks that many distros "just work" at this point, but +1 for PopOS. Been using it for gaming for a year now, first with nvidia and then later with the (easier) AMD.

I run pop os and it's been flawless. Every game I've gone to play has worked great. I've tried for 15 years to make the switch and something always holds me back. Not this time, Linux has come a long way and there is nothing windows had that I miss.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It is a rolling distro like Arch but has automated testing of packages, and has been extremely stable in my experience. It's great for gaming because you get all the latest software very quickly after release. According to my observations TW receives updates on average quicker than Arch.

Graphical setups usually have options for dual boot. Pretty much any distro works once they're set up. And setup is not hard on any imo, most download the appropriate drivers automatically at install so you only need to install Steam and it handles proton.

What left a sour taste the last time?

Just use Manjaro KDE. It has "Install alongside" option during installation if you don't wanna remove Windows. Also Newbie support and gaming performance is excellent.