Linux Gaming

Hello, gorgeous community!

My friend, a generally non-technical person is looking for a good gaming distro. He has been daily driving Windows and OS X before, his main motivation for switching Linux is to streamline his contributions to a game development project we have, that is largely Linux-based (we use Nix for dev environments and build automation).

The only Linux distro I've ever used for gaming is SteamOS, and all my other experience is in the Nix/Arch domain, so I am not sure what to recommend to my friend.

As I mentioned, the only hard requirement we have is a possibility to sustainably use Nix package manager with experimental functions (command, flakes), - and I am willing to help my friend setting it all up. But I also would like him to be able to use the OS for gaming whilst experiencing only the expected and acceptable amounts of pain.

So far we have Nobara and Chimera on our radar. Is there something you can recommend? Any advice in general would be helpful, thanks in advance!