You want to game and you want it to be easy. Just install Bazzite, ignore people suggesting Mint. Mint is the best traditional distro ever made, but it has major flaws and it gets difficult if you try to game in it. Containerized immutable OS are way better for novices and the average user. People want to use their computer, not manage a computer they never use. A lot of us Linux fanatics we tend to forget that fact.

You have plenty of technical knowledge to get it installed. And that’s about it for what is required.

Don’t dual boot Windows, it gets too hands on and too technical fast. Instead, have Windows on a entirely separate second drive. Boot to the desired drive accordingly. Linux plays nice and can work with windows perfectly, but windows actively hates linux and will fuck up any drive it shares with it. So it is best windows is absolutely oblivious as to the existence of Linux in the machine. For that you’ll need to disable secureboot and probably disk encryption as well. As I said, it’s a technical challenge. Not worth it in my personal opinion.

Be mindful about the games you play, often if it doesn’t run on Linux is not because of any technical limitation on Linux side. It’s because of the political will to hurt Linux. This is why virtually all indie games run fine on Linux, it’s AAA slop that is designed to stop working if it detects it’s running on Linux.