CachyOS is another suggestion, based off Arch Linux
Very late to this, but since Framework only officially support Ubuntu and Fedora, (at time of typing) I would recommend one of those two.
I think neither are ideal, but they’re both good starting points,
I would recommend Ubuntu if you don’t want to get deep into the Linux ecosystem, Ubuntu do a few things there own way, they use snaps which most others don’t use, and try to push away use of flatpaks, you mentioned SteamOS in the first post, SteamOS uses flatpaks if you ever use desktop mode.
However, every other distro that isn’t Ubuntu struggles when it comes down to tutorials, how to’s and the likes, if you ask “How to do x in linux” it will usually be instructions for Ubuntu, these aren’t to difficult to either use, or modify to use on other Linux systems, but its a extra barrier, no matter how high or small.
I would recommend looking at the immutable versions of Fedora for new starters,
kinoite for KDE and Silverblue for Gnome.
Immutable file systems are what SteamOS uses, it makes the OS a little less flexible, but it also makes it harder to break anything.
I don’t think there’s any real “This distro is better than x distro for gaming” the only issue with fedora and ubuntu, is that they may have old drivers, for a good bit longer than linux os’s that are arch based, or other rolling releasing types of OS’s.
If I were to use one of the officially supported distro’s, I would go with Kinoite personally.
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Expanding on what @PhoenixLandPirate shared above and is absolutely correct on, unofficially and strictly as a community/fan project, I have the Ublue team testing Framework 13 (13th Gen) and they’re doing amazing things there.
I have no direct involvement at this time, outside of providing feedback and suggestions. Eventually, I want to see about including the 16 into their testing. But that would be some time out.
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Lots of suggestions here, but I have had zero issues playing my whole steam library on Ubuntu. Things work surprising well.
Honestly, it does not matter - you can (and should) install Steam as a Flatpak, and use it that way, and Flatpaks work the same on any distribution.
Except maybe Ubuntu, because Ubuntu sucks big time and decided to roll their own competition to Flatpak in a major case of Not-invented-here syndrome.
Personally, I always recommend openSUSE with KDE Plasma, IMO the most beginner-friendly distribution out there.
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I would too, with the added benefit of running on Wayland - no screen tearing.
Thank y’all for all the info you have shared.
Since the switch back in April, I’ve found my experience in Linux to be quite great! I was able to find a WM type that I didn’t even know existed (that would be a tiling WM, specifically i3), and while I was scared of the terminal at first, I found that I actually preferred doing many things in the terminal than their graphical counterparts.
As for games, I’ve had a great time playing them on Fedora 38. It was great to see how well games worked with it, as I knew that was something linux used to struggle with. In fact, the only hiccup I’ve had is when a game tried to launch using directx12 instead of 11, which prevented it from working. But that was an easy fix.
So overall, I’ve come to love Linux far more than I ever did windows, with the ability to customize my experience far more, and the great compatibility of many programs through wine!
P.S. Can’t wait to have my FW 16! (I have batch 11 though, so I’ll be waiting awhile…)
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Just curious on the reason to go with Flatpack over RPM for Steam on Fedora?
Well - flatpak has all required dependencies packaged inside the flatpak, while RPM only provides what is required using the existing/provided dependencies.
Flatpak is distribition independen while RPM requires the RPM package manager to be present.
In short, this results essentially in space usage during installation, and work put into it by devs. when creating the flatpak or RPM package
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Those sound like reasons not to use Flatpak 
I can think of two reasons, the first being standardization, where you’re placing yourself in the same group as the rest of the Flatpak Steam users across Linux distros, vs. your chosen distro’s non-Flatpak set of Steam users. If you’re on a niche distro, that could be more people, might make it more likely to work better.
The second is sandboxing. As most modern games are essentially malware, you can use Flatseal to review and manage what files and computer resources Steam and its games have access to, to some degree. It’s not a complete solution, and alternatives do exist, but, at least you can keep games out of your home directory.
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That is so true … 