make the most use of the hardware

All distros should do this equally well, and better than Windows

let me play the most games

All distros will be more or less the same. Games generally work or they dont. Check ProtonDB to see which games work and how well.

easiest to use

lowest maintenance possible

This is how distros actually differ.

Some common suggestions:

Ubuntu LTS:

• Upgrade your OS every 2 years
• Proprietary drivers are there if you need them (Nvidia is the only GPU that needs them)
• GNOME shell environment is very beautiful and fast, but very different from Windows

Kubuntu LTS:

• Upgrade your OS every 2 years
• Proprietary drivers are there if you need them (Nvidia is the only GPU that needs them)
• KDE Plasma Desktop is like all the best parts of windows 95/xp/7/10/11 + os9/OSX/macOS combined, improved, and made super customizeable

Ubuntu/Kubuntu current:

• Upgrade your OS every 6 months
• Newer software than LTS
• Otherwise same as LTS

Linux Mint:

• Upgrade your OS every 2 years
• Proprietary drivers are there if you need them (Nvidia is the only GPU that needs them)
• Cinnamon Desktop is a better looking and faster implementation of a Windows 7 style desktop

Fedora

• Upgrade your OS every 9 months (or else)
• Proprietary codecs need to be added after install to play some video and music streams in your browser. It’s like 3 commands copy/pasted into the terminal
• Proprietary drivers are there if you need them (Nvidia is the only GPU that needs them)
• Choice of several desktop environments (Fedora spins)

Pop!_OS

• Fun to spell
• Upgrade your OS every 2 years
• Proprietary drivers are there if you need them (Nvidia is the only GPU that needs them)
• Pop_shell makes you feel like a hacker from the future, but is very unlike Windows

I do not reccomend Bazzite, Kali, Arch, Manjaro, Garuda, Debian, or Slackware. They are all great distros for specific use-cases, but they are all significantly more work to configure and/or maintain than the suggestions i’ve outlined.

I haven’t tried Nobara so i cant recommend it, but from the outside it looks fine for a gaming desktop.

Edit: I have mixed feelings on Bazzite, but it might also be a good option for someone feeling adventurous

I’ve been running Fedora with KDE on my Razer Blade 15 (2020 Advanced). Without knowing your specific hardware model I think you can run any reasonably popular distro and game happily.

You may want to look into something like Bazzite or Nobara.

Generally though, most distros will be perfectly fine for gaming – just note that some distros will need a little bit of extra work done for stuff like nvidia drivers, so if you’re new to linux, something like those above, which have that done already, will likely be best. Bazzite in particular should be very low maintenance.

I would try with Bazzite or Pop OS first.

I have a Razer blade 15 advanced from a few years ago. I’ve run Arch on it, and now NixOS

It does steam fine, I can use the GPU for gaming, all that fun stuff.

I have a Blade Stealth 13 QHD+ touchscreen (RZ09-02393E32) since 2017. Until recently it was mostly Windows and Ubuntu side by side. I realized few months ago I never ever boot on Windows so I removed it. I also got tired on Ubuntu pushing for its own package management system which I don’t find useful. Consequently back to “just” Debian stable and works great for me. Didn’t have to tinker with anything, just works.

My gaming rig has been running Nobara for years now, it’s built off of Fedora by the developer who does the glorious eggroll version of Proton.

It’s got multiple desktop environment versions and is optimized for Linux gaming. It has a bunch of gaming-specific kernel patches and optimizations. Extra drivers pre-installed for controllers and Nvidia GPUs, etc.

It has a very easy update wizard, I run it once every few weeks, works awesome.

Nobara Linux

None.

I had a Razer laptop in the past when they were talking about being dev laptop forward & supporting Linux.

This never happened. Instead flashing Linux voids the warranty now, support drops you, & firmware upgrades only happen thru a green-accented genuine Microsoft Windows GUI installation (no *.bin flashing, no CLI FreeDOS support, no Windows PE).

Generally hardware compatibility should be identical across all distros, as most drivers are baked into the kernel

The exception being Nvidia drivers, you have to install those yourself pretty much everywhere

Lowest maintenance possible is probably gonna be bazzite as people are saying

Normal distros

• Pop!_OS
• Mint
• Fedora
• Ubuntu

Gaming distros

• Garuda
• Bazzite
• Nobara

…or any other distro really. I’ve been gaming on vanilla arch linux. It’s pretty stable and low maintenance once you’re done setting it up and don’t tinker much and have backups with something like Timeshift in place. archinstall script makes it really easy to install vanilla arch linux with everything essential configured.

I had to set one of these up for my SO a couple of years ago. I dropped EndeavourOS on it, installed btrbk and configured automatic snapshots on a schedule and before package installation/update in case she managed to bork things by pip installing things into system python.

Fedora would probably work well too if you want a lower maintenance burden. I hesitate to suggest Ubuntu or Debian or their derivatives since you’ll probably want to be somewhat current with your Nvidia drivers.

I’ve used a Razer Blade 16 last year and could never get the speakers to work no matter what I tried. Tested quite a few distros (Mint, Manjaro, Debian) and ultimately settled on Fedora. Didn’t mind the speakers not working much since I used Bluetooth speakers/headphones mostly anyway. Other then that Fedora worked prefectly.

Maybe Garuda ?

Thanks for your thread, I also have to upgrade my Blade 15. It automatically installed Windows 11 which broke the built in monitor (lol). Let me know if you have any success with these comments’ suggestions!