So I was thinking of switching my desktop to linux. I have been running fedora on my laptop for 3 years and I really like it. My main question now is just what distro works best for gaming (considering my specs) and can I use VMs in any of the gaming oriented ones (mostly because I don't wanna keep dual booting).
Edit: I have gone with Bazzite for now and it seems to be working fine. Some games don't rrally work acceptably (I expected that) so I will keep dual booting for a while.
IMO, basically any distro with fairly modern (fairly often updated) packages should do. Apart from some build/packaging differences it's all same software anyway. The gaming side of software gets updated fairly often, so that's why you'd probably want frequently updated packages.
"Gaming" distros are basically just selection of gaming specific packages installed as default, instead of lets say productivity apps. You can run VM's in gaming/studio/whatever distros
FWIW, I got 5800x3D, RTX3090 - so, "close enough" same system as you. At least same series cpu/gpu. Running Arch, and gaming has been pretty easy, haven't yet found a game which didn't work - that said, some occasional game has had odd stutters (Darktide, for one. But I haven't tested in months).
Getting things to run did get a bit more involved than "just click it". Some extra compatibility stuff (proton-ge-custom), launchers (lutris, heroic, because GoG Galaxy just refuses to work). Steam & steam-games tend to "just work", although actual native-linux games seem to have issues while running the windows-version of the same game on proton just work - WEIRD.
But overall, stuff works, and in case of issues it now just seems to be either disabling ntsync and/or wayland for specific games and gaming away.
Some things work, some do not. Check proton compatibility DB for your games of choice.
If you like fortnite, GTA, rdr, or games with really strong anti cheating features, expect to be launching Windows..
Everything this.
Personally nonissue since I don't play any of those online/pvp games
It's not all the same. A key thing you want is to get the latest graphics drivers (mesa or proprietary) as soon as possible after release. Same day or at least week. For that you probably want a rolling release like Tumbleweed, or something based on Arch, like CachyOS. I'm running Pop OS, and I still don't have the drivers needed for Doom: The Dark Ages. Seems to take like a month or so for Pop OS to update Mesa. Seriously considering trying CachyOS for this reason.
I already installed fedora but games just don't get stable framerates. might have to do a clean install and try again.
make sure first that it isn't issue with specific games, some may require some proton flags to be set for them to behave properly. Or just newer/older proton/wine.
in general worth a try to switch the compatibility thingy (technical term),
steam, in game's properties:
collapsed inline media
but similar option is in lutris/heroic too.
I know at least one of the games has a linux version that runs better on my laptop than on the desktop.
God damn I literally just did a clean install of fedora 42 and I cannot even get past the stupid setup stage. They changed it so now you choose everything after installing and I cannot get past the timezone select screen. It just freezes
I seem to recall a bug (but maybe it's only Fedora Silverblue) but anyways try not selecting the option to install 3rd party software, and see if the set up lets you continue. You can then make the selection to enable 3rd party software the first time you open the Software app.
I don't recall that option being available in the setup
It is, I was playing around with it in a VM just the other day.
Where in the setup was it?
Try Manjaro KDE. XFCE if you adventurous.
I switched to CachyOS on a 5700X3D/3060 combo 6 months ago and have had zero issues gaming. CachyOS has a custom fork of proton and it has worked like a dream. Lutris and Steam have been rock solid after some mild setup and my framerate has been as good as/better than it ever was on Windows. I've run a couple VMs to test and also had no problems there. Definitely check ProtonDB for the minor tweaks necessary for some games to run but most have just worked out of the box once setting steam to use compatibilty.
Its not really weird.
Happy cake day!