Let me start by saying I think Linux Mint is one of the top 5 greatest distros of all time. It is an absolutely essential starting point for many people and their work is responsible for much of the user-friendliness you see in the world of Linux today. It is stable, has a nice aesthetic, “just works”, and doesn’t make you update constantly.
These things are great but they are the very things that make Linux Mint unsuited for online gaming. Is this a bad thing? No!! It’s just not a distro made for gaming purposes. It’s like showing up to a monster truck drag race in a Ferrari. I cannot count on my two hands how many times I have provided support to a user, to find their issue was outdated libraries due to using Linux Mint. It happens all the time. Go look at any game on ProtonDB that is currently working, and you’ll find 1-2 “not working” reports and they are always on either Debian on Mint.
I understand why we see it so often, because Linux Mint is awesome and users want to play their games on it. But if I suggested Hell Let Loose to a friend using Linux Mint right now, the first distro suggested for gaming in our FAQ, he wouldn’t be able to play because of his choice of distro. Making rolling distros look like a fortress in 2023 and suggesting Mint for gaming will only set new Linux users up for disappointment.
It really depends on the “gamer”. Arch is the best distro for people who play MMORPGs and mod their games a lot.
MMORPGs because basically, you start with like 3 abilities in your rotation, and this eventually becomes like 20 abilities to maximize DPS, just like Arch starts with bare minimum, and as you learn to use it you get more comfy with it like you get comfy with a large rotation.
I honestly think people’s mileage may HEAVILY vary on this of course, but dropping a bunch of shit on an end user at once is like if you kicked someone into an MMORPG mid-expansion, rushed them to level 60 by way of a special item, and said “hey, decipher all this bullshit you’ve had no practice with that we dumped on you all at once, and if you don’t maximize DPS your team is gonna yell at you”. I think this is the folly of some “beginner distros” that include a bunch of shit by default. “where is microsoft word, what in the fuck is a Libreoffice? I haven’t googled anything or practiced in a smaller scale yet and I’m overwhelmed!”