At the end of the day, any Distro that you pick will be essentially the same, as far as handling WoW. I have played WoW over the years on the multiple Linux Distros that I have used. The best way would be via Proton from within Steam. I tend to like the custom Proton version - Glorious Eggroll’s version.

For Linux Distros, pick one that is heavily documented like Ubuntu / Mint, both Debian based and tons of troubleshooting articles in case you need to reference them. Tend to prefer Mint between these two, personal choice. I tend to prefer Arch based ones, since they have what is called the AUR (Arch user Repo) which allows more complied apps to be downloaded and used on the system.

Admittedly, I’m probably not the best person to ask for recommendation of a noob-friendly distro, but I feel people are overthinking this. If someone produces a list which includes distros I’ve never heard of, I think they spent too much time on ‘Top 10 Noob Friendly Distros in 2025’ websites.

If you really care about my recommendation, just start with Mint.

I would personally recommend popos or mint. I have varying amount of experience with the others.

Bazzite is very hyped on Lemmy, I don’t quite understand how it works, it seems good for what it is, but I don’t know if I would recommend it as someone’s first Linux daily driver.

Manjaro seems great most of the time, until the maintainers mess something up and royally screw up your system. But that’s just things I’ve heard, your milage will vary.

Nobara worked really well for me, but ultimately I wasn’t very comfortable to use a distro maintained by one guy, even if that guy is glorious egg roll.

I personally use popos. I wish it was fedora based like Nobara, but you can’t have it all. Wow works straight out the box. There are appimages or deb packages for warcraft logs and curse as well, so they work fine.

First, gaming distros are vanilla distros with opinionated tweaks and additions to support the hobby of gaming. It might be as simple as having Steam pre-installed to as complex as having unique kernels or custom package repos maintained by the distro maintainers.

But that doesn’t mean vanilla is always the best choice, because not everybody wants to spend time optimizing everything. Some distros even have easy setup scripts for otherwise complex installations (like for Davinci Resolve). Don’t feel like you need to pick vanilla to be a “true user.”

Some easy to set up Distros for gaming that are ready ootb:

• Bazzite: Fedora Atomic, practically bulletproof, just works. Downsides are that adding new packages is not the same as other distros, and there’s a learning curve to it beyond flatpaks. Some software can’t be installed at all if it doesn’t come as an RPM or AppImage (Private Internet Access’s VPN client, for example).

• CachyOS: Arch with an optimized kernel and optimized packages. Comes with some easy-install scripts. Tool to easily select different kernels and schedulers. Currently another very popular choice. Like the above, this just works. There’s some debate about how significant the optimizations really are, but they’re there nonetheless.

• Nobara: Traditional Fedora. Like Bazzite, just works. Has a custom update manager that acts as a GUI wrapper for your usual cli tools. Maintained by GloriousEggroll, a widely respected user that maintains the GE versions of Proton.

• PikaOS: Debian (not Ubuntu). Combines the philosophies of Nobara and CachyOS and puts them atop Debian. Better setup scripts than even CachyOS, a more user friendly update tool than Nobara’s, and has the same kernel selection and scheduler tools as CachyOS, plus the same package optimizations. Don’t let the fact that it’s Debian underneath fool you. This has the latest kernel and drivers.

I would try all of those in a VM and see what you like about them. They’re all unique and worth a look.

ETA: all of these have Nvidia versions, so all of them should work with your card.

Do Bazzite. It will be unbeatable for just working and ease of use.

Stay away from Manjaro for anything.

SteamOS that Valve offers is not the same as what’s on the Steam Deck. It’s extremely dated and is what it used to be. A real distro from Valve has yet to be released.

The best way to install WoW is using Lutris, which also comes with Bazzite. You search for and install Battle.net, then you can install WoW normally. Lutris can also add a WoW shortcut once WoW is installed, too.

You can also just copy and paste the WoW folder from your Windows Program Files folder. It keeps all your settings and addons.

For addons use Wowup-curse. It’s a open source addon manager that is just straight up better than all others.

Currently, WoW needs Proton-GE to work. Using wine-staging, or the dated wine-ge, and Battle.net will have problems starting. It’s something weird with authentication and connecting online. Proton-GE contains a patch specifically for this.

The easiest way to get Proton-GE is using Protonup-Qt if using KDE plasma, or Proton Plus if you’re using Gnome. For Protonup-QT, you select Steam, then install Proton-GE for Steam. Lutris will also be able to use it.

Just general advice, I’d use the latest Proton-GE as the default for all Steam games.

In Lutris set the runner for Battle.net to Proton-GE.

Source: I’ve tried all but Drauger OS, and currently play retail WoW.

As long as all of your drivers working fine, I don’t think it matter all that much on which distro you choose

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Any reasonably modern, well maintained desktop distro should be fine; whether they’re “for gaming” or not shouldn’t matter. I’ve successfully run WoW on both Debian Stable and Arch.

wow is one of the easiest things to run and has ran pretty much fine since it came out in 2004 lol

The newer battle net launcher is more difficult to run, but lutris auto installs all that for you.

Avoid small “made for [something]” distros. Use something as mainstream as possible. Debian/Ubuntu/RedHat. Select something that you like from these.

I personally (I’m sure others will disagree) would recommend skipping Manjaro and maybe Pop.

If you want to try Arch based pick Endeavor instead of Manjaro.

It seems like new folks have a lot of trouble with Pop to me. Out of the Ubuntu-based side I’d choose Mint over the rest.

Also don’t discount base Debian, people sneer at it because of the speed of the update cycle but the other side of that is it being the least likely to blow up on a new user.

Full disclosure: My devices are currently split between endeavor and Debian, depending on my tolerance for things breaking. I know fuck all about Bazzite/Nobara/Fedora.

I’d say stick to what you know. So one of the Debian or Ubuntu based distros. Like Ubuntu, Mint or Pop OS.

Stay away from Valve’s Debian based SteamOS. That is horribly outdated and has nothing to do with what people nowadays mean when they say “SteamOS”. I’m always surprised to learn that it’s still available.

In the end it doesn’t really matter which distro you choose. All of them should have no problems with running WoW.

I play Starcraft 2 through Proton, it works pretty well. These days pretty much all distros are perfectly fine for gaming, maybe with the exception of Debian stable. If you’re new, I’d recommend staying away from Arch and derivatives like Manjaro. Also try to keep things simple for yourself and avoid flatpaks, snaps, and appimages.

I’ve played WoW on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. No problems there.

You can install battlenet with steam, just add it as a non-steam game and proton does everything for you. I did it yesterday.