I definitely second Fedora. I started on Manjaro when windows 11 kicked off their shenanigans and moved over to Fedora since I used it a bit in college. I also got my brother to use Fedora and once he got used to the slight differences he was off to the races. (I was pleasantly surprised since he isn't technical at all, he just wanted something setup so he could play PC games occasionally).
Yeah, I've been pretty happy with Fedora. Bleeding edge which is nice but generally good stability from what I can tell. Only time I borked it was, well my fault really. I've dabbled in other distros and really that's why I'm glad there's so many. Everyone can get their favorite flavor.
I should write a guide on this, but the short version of what you can do is run the games either directly with WINE, or use a patched version of WINE that will give you a near-identical Proton experience. The reason that's desirable is Proton has a lot of patches that are either on the way to upstream WINE, or might never make it because they are essentially hacks instead of stable code deserving of being in the upstream WINE project. But the end result is a lot of games are immediately playable at equal to or sometimes even better than Windows performance. Note that this can also be true with just the normal version of WINE you get from your Linux distro, depending on how new that is and the games you want to play.
Like RussianEngineer said, most emulators just have a default Linux version, and you're best off using that. If you're trying to play older games that were made for Windows, you can try to use Lutris (A game manager/launcher) + Wine-GE (a well-regarded custom wine). Using Lutris is really beneficial because once you set up the game, you can just launch it from the GUI. Sort of like Steam, come to think of it, but with a little elbow-grease applied.
https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom#installation is the custom Proton version. I always just do the "manual" route.
If you want something bleeding edge that is still stable, Fedora is the way to go.
Second. There's really no point to Manjaro. Use Fedora, use some OS that's actually just an install script for Arch, or just bite the bullet and install Arch yourself. Manjaro's problem is it's still Arch under the hood and therefore you will have to maintain it like you would Arch.
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I definitely second Fedora. I started on Manjaro when windows 11 kicked off their shenanigans and moved over to Fedora since I used it a bit in college. I also got my brother to use Fedora and once he got used to the slight differences he was off to the races. (I was pleasantly surprised since he isn't technical at all, he just wanted something setup so he could play PC games occasionally).
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Yeah, I've been pretty happy with Fedora. Bleeding edge which is nice but generally good stability from what I can tell. Only time I borked it was, well my fault really. I've dabbled in other distros and really that's why I'm glad there's so many. Everyone can get their favorite flavor.
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I should write a guide on this, but the short version of what you can do is run the games either directly with WINE, or use a patched version of WINE that will give you a near-identical Proton experience. The reason that's desirable is Proton has a lot of patches that are either on the way to upstream WINE, or might never make it because they are essentially hacks instead of stable code deserving of being in the upstream WINE project. But the end result is a lot of games are immediately playable at equal to or sometimes even better than Windows performance. Note that this can also be true with just the normal version of WINE you get from your Linux distro, depending on how new that is and the games you want to play.
Like RussianEngineer said, most emulators just have a default Linux version, and you're best off using that. If you're trying to play older games that were made for Windows, you can try to use Lutris (A game manager/launcher) + Wine-GE (a well-regarded custom wine). Using Lutris is really beneficial because once you set up the game, you can just launch it from the GUI. Sort of like Steam, come to think of it, but with a little elbow-grease applied.
https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom#installation is the custom Proton version. I always just do the "manual" route.
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for outside of steam there's WINE, which is the basis of proton. proton is WINE but with extra patches to make it run the newest games better
for retro stuff i assume you mean emulators, most emulators have a linux version or at least there is a emulator for the console you want on linux
Most games work great on proton. , and sometimes even better than on Windows. Elden Ring runs dramatically better on it.
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a lot of console emulators have linux versions
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It's great with the exception of games that use Easy Anti Cheat and equivalent types of software
Easy anti cheat works in many games now
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Second. There's really no point to Manjaro. Use Fedora, use some OS that's actually just an install script for Arch, or just bite the bullet and install Arch yourself. Manjaro's problem is it's still Arch under the hood and therefore you will have to maintain it like you would Arch.