You’re getting a lot of good advice. Whatever distro you decide to use, try to find a live CD that lets you use it on the PC without installing it. That should ease your mind tremendously.

try it, you can always install windows again

Nvidia drivers should be automatic

Yes wayland works but I don’t use it

On the log in screen you will have an option if both are installed (typically)

Can’t answer but this exists https://github.com/rockerbacon/modorganizer2-linux-installer

Proton works with any system, if you’re having difficulties with games using it then that will likely carry over unless it’s a performance bottleneck

Yes and no; there are linux anti-cheats. But a lot of devs just block Linux - Easy anti-cheat has a Linux version but Fortnite doesn’t use it. I can play Fall Guys if I stop it from downloading Epic’s authentication

I’m sorry, I don’t have time to address your questions individually but you should check out Nobara Linux, it is Fedora modded heavily for gamers and they have a version with Nvidia drivers pre installed. It works near perfectly out of the box, I haven’t tried mod organizers but Lutris works great for any game that doesn’t run thru Steam Proton.

Fedora and OpenSUSE are supported directly by nVidia. You can add specific nVidia hosted repos to install the drivers.

Bazzite is a steam like OS based on Fedora that is tailored to gaming.

I’m not sure about other distros but many will have an option to use wayland or X11 at the login prompt.

Go for it. Switching to Linux has never been easier than it is today. I still keep a Windows virtual machine for when I need to use specific Windows applications, but aside from that I have been running Linux on my work and gaming machines for two years now with zero issues.

I’m surprised to hear you had problems with Proton - in my experience it has been seamless, although there are still some titles that don’t work so well with it. I don’t play any games that require anti-cheat, though, so there is that.

It’s never easy to say which distro is best, because every user and every machine is different. I personally recommend Nobara instead of Fedora, as a lot of the post-install tweaking is already done for you and it should even install the latest Nvidia drivers for you as well.

I don’t know anything about Mod Organizer but I’ll take a crack at the ones I actually know something about.

1. My main computer is a laptop with an Nvidia GPU and the only big issue I have with Wayland is that the HDMI interface doesn’t work. However, this is probably just an issue with my individual card because I’ve heard that newer cards tend to be better and mine is over 11 years old. For drivers, most distros have an automatic driver install process in the software manager. If your card is fairly new, it should work just fine.
2. For the foreseeable future, the Plasma spin of Fedora (I don’t read up on the GNOME see much) will allow you to use the Xorg or Wayland sessions as you see fit. All it takes is for you to log out, switch the session, and log back in.
3. Proton works just fine on Fedora. In fact, Nobara (a prominent gaming-focused distro) is built on Fedora.
4. As long as Steam has the necessary permissions in your permission manager it should work fine. I run Steam as a Flatpak and I haven’t run into any issues because of it (yet).
5. The anti-cheat question is a bit tougher. Some games work just fine but others just don’t. I would recommend that you check each of your games for anti-cheat compatibility before fully committing. If you have your heart set on playing League of Legends or Valorant, for example, you’re unfortunately going to need Windows.

I hope this info helps. Please feel free to ask for more clarification!

How would I install NVIDIA drivers?

Depends on the distro, but you usually just need to look around in the settings, it’s pretty easy.

MO2 does work on Linux, I’ve played modded Skyrim extensively on my Steam Deck. Works like a charm! https://github.com/rockerbacon/modorganizer2-linux-installer

There are games with anticheat which are compatible with Linux. Usually Easy Anti Cheat games will work fine. Go to protondb.com if you want to check the compatibility with a game. Sorry, I can’t answer the other quesrions for you, I don’t use Fedora

How would I install NVIDIA drivers? https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA

Does Wayland work with NVIDIA? (I don’t know)

• A lot of distros are moving to Wayland. How would I ensure I stay on an Xorg session? GNOME now defaults to Wayland. Instructions to use xOrg instead: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/configuring-xorg-as-default-gnome-session/ I’d other desktop environments will similarly have mechanisms switch, at least during a transition period.

• I enjoy modding Bethesda games. Does Mod Organizer work fully on Linux? Your mileage may vary, but it looks likely: https://github.com/rockerbacon/modorganizer2-linux-installer

• I’ve had difficulties running my steam games through proton on my laptop. Does proton work with Fedora? I suspect it will. Steam has been pouring money into making it’s catalog Linux ready, https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/gaming/proton/

• With said difficulties with proton, would installing Steam as a flatpak work or will it cause issues? In principle it ought to, but there appears to be an issue with it currently. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/gaming/proton/

• Can you really not play any games with anti-cheat? Anti cheat software generally works by looking for irregularities that detect if there’s any program besides Windows that’s intercepting system calls. It is unfortunately by exactly this mechanism that allows Proton to work (as Windows isn’t present).

Fedora is a great foundation for stability and up to date software. I personally use Ultramarine Linux; it’s a general purpose distro based on Fedora, but with more desktop environments, more available packages, more media codecs (plain fedora leaves out a bunch of codecs that you need to play audio or video files), and some more sane defaults. Even with all that, it isn’t noticeably more bloated than Fedora; it just gives you more options and makes it so that you don’t have to follow a “Things You MUST Do After I stalling Fedora” article.

Wayland works with Nvidia in my experience, and Wayland is remarkably stable and xorg-compatible. Folks will argue about that, but it’s been great for the few years I’ve used it on my laptop and desktop. I know at least Ultramarine installs both, and you can switch between them on the login screen, so give it a shot.

If your games don’t work, it’s quite normal to dual boot windows just for gaming.

Also, you might consider making your home folder a separate partition. That means you can reinstall and switch distros while leaving your documents and media and such in place. That said, partitioning manually is hard to get the hang of; let me know if you want some help on that front.

First of all Fedora is a great distro and I do suggest it if you like it, otherwise I suggest Nobara(fedora based) or Pop_OS(ubuntu LTS based) as they both have iso’s that come with nvidia drivers pre installed. Nobara has steam pre installed too.

(quick note about Nobara: beside pretty much being Fedora customized(and optimized) for gaming and made more user friendly it is maintained by only one devoloper. This person is the creator of the popular proton version ProtonGE and a Red Hat employee, “Glorious Eggroll” and it is still FOSS so trust shouldn’t be an issue BUT due to the small number of maintainers it is more likely to break and should be considered somewhat experimental, despite this it is my daily driver and fave distro)

I use wayland just fine with an rtx 3060 but it js unstable for many othera and you can choose witch session you wanna boot into (x11 or wayland) on the login screen so that shouldn’t be problem to find which works the best for you

I Mod FNV and FO4 using MO2 on linux it works fine but the initial set up was a little painfull.

Steam should work fine both as native package and Flatpak. and proton works with any distro

Many games with anticheat work with linux and many don’t you can check your games on areweanticheatyet.com

I think you should check out Bazzite or uBlue.
They’re both based on the immutable versions of Fedora, but more or less slightly tweaked.

I would recommend them over Nobara. Nobara is very insecure and a one-man-project, and I don’t know if that are criteria for a solid distro.

The atomic Fedora spins on the other hand have many advantages:

• secure
• self maintaining and easy to use
• unbreakable, and you can roll back easily in case something breaks
• work out of the box
• you can select the -nvidia images and then your drivers are already baked in, since they are known to break or cause problems.

Bazzite is an attempt to “clone” SteamOS/ Nobara, and provides you with a great out of the box gaming setup.
The other uBlue spins are more vanilla and general purpose.

You could also check out VanillaOS, which is currently under development, but very focused on simplicity and newcomers.

Your questions:

• Nvidia: see my uBlue answer. They’re baked in and the best setup. If you want a traditional mutable distro, like Fedora, Mint, etc., you can install them with one click, but they might cause problems.
• Game compatibility: look at protondb.com A lot of Anticheat software works, but a lot more don’t. Depends. Remember to activate Proton in Steam, or most games don’t get shown.
• Modding software should also work, check out Bottles (Wine)
• X/ Wayland: Just try WL and see if it causes problems. With the proprietary Nvidia drivers, and especially Gnome, it should work fine and is in general way better (smoother, etc.) than X

Mod organizer has a linux install script on github that I’ve used without issues before. I play skyrim on Ubuntu 23.10 with well over 100 mods and it’s been largely just the same as on windows.