Initially Valve's Steam Hardware & Software Survey for December 2025 showed Linux at 3.19%, but they appear to have amended it with a nice boost for Linux.
Maybe something other than Ubuntu? Ubuntu is past its prime, it used to be good, but as other distros got better, it didn’t, leaving it outcompeted. I’d recommend Mint, Bazzite, Fedora, or PopOS, but that’s just the sentiment I’m getting from the community; I myself have only used Ubuntu and openSUSE on desktop, and have used Debian in VMs for stuff.
Currently I use openSUSE, which I like, but it’s not a beginner distro. It’s quite universal, but that means not targeting beginners nor advanced users specifically. Debian is also like that (Maybe I’d use Debian if it had a good rolling release, but Debian Unstable is for testing and not meant to be stable, as opposed to openSUSE Tumbleweed which is probably the stablest rolling release out there, with a good QA system, because it’s meant for daily use.). I’ve also heard that Fedora is universal like this. So why is it regarded as so good for beginners? Maybe openSUSE is actually fine for beginner usage? I don’t know. The install would probably require the guidance of a Linux user though.
I would suggest separate partitions for data/game installs if you want to try multiple distros without needing to reinstall your games. Just need to mount the partition in the new distro, maybe have steam scan it (or just set it as your game install location) and you’re good to go. Encryption might complicate the steps, but I don’t see much point in encrypting a game install partition in the first place.
Edit: Meant this comment to add on to your reply and address the “just set up a single partition”, since you addressed the distro. On that note, I’ve been happy enough with Fedora KDE that I haven’t even gotten around to trying a new distro (took me almost a year to try KDE and realize I liked it better than cinnamon in practically every way).
Maybe something other than Ubuntu? Ubuntu is past its prime, it used to be good, but as other distros got better, it didn’t, leaving it outcompeted. I’d recommend Mint, Bazzite, Fedora, or PopOS, but that’s just the sentiment I’m getting from the community; I myself have only used Ubuntu and openSUSE on desktop, and have used Debian in VMs for stuff.
Currently I use openSUSE, which I like, but it’s not a beginner distro. It’s quite universal, but that means not targeting beginners nor advanced users specifically. Debian is also like that (Maybe I’d use Debian if it had a good rolling release, but Debian Unstable is for testing and not meant to be stable, as opposed to openSUSE Tumbleweed which is probably the stablest rolling release out there, with a good QA system, because it’s meant for daily use.). I’ve also heard that Fedora is universal like this. So why is it regarded as so good for beginners? Maybe openSUSE is actually fine for beginner usage? I don’t know. The install would probably require the guidance of a Linux user though.
I would suggest separate partitions for data/game installs if you want to try multiple distros without needing to reinstall your games. Just need to mount the partition in the new distro, maybe have steam scan it (or just set it as your game install location) and you’re good to go. Encryption might complicate the steps, but I don’t see much point in encrypting a game install partition in the first place.
Edit: Meant this comment to add on to your reply and address the “just set up a single partition”, since you addressed the distro. On that note, I’ve been happy enough with Fedora KDE that I haven’t even gotten around to trying a new distro (took me almost a year to try KDE and realize I liked it better than cinnamon in practically every way).