Maybe EndeavourOS (a convenient installer for Arch) with a desktop that supports Wayland.

I run that with Gnome in Wayland mode on my desktop and with Sway (Wayland equivalent of i3) on my laptop and I’ve been very happy with that. You could also run KDE if you prefer

Thanks for the new vocabulary. That’s a useful word

I think most distros will work just fine. It’s gotten so so much easier since Valve invested in Proton to make the Steam Deck work.

Personally, I’m on EndeavourOS with Gnome and it works fine for all my Steam games on an AMD GPU. Years ago, I was on Linux Mint, and that worked just fine for gaming too.

One caveat: if you have an Nvidia GPU, driver support can sometimes be a headache (or at least it was several years ago when I had one). Some distros claim better out of the box support for Nvidia, like Pop OS

EndeavourOS on desktop and laptop. It’s been working great for years

As the de facto IT guy for my family, I block ads on all their computers just as a basic safety measure.

I can usually spot a fake download button and avoid scammy sites, but my parents and grandparents seem magnetically attracted to them