I have been using Linux forever. I’ve used Red hat, SUSE, Debian, Slackware, Mandrake, Ubuntu and now Arch with KDE. Part of the fun is trying different distros.
I’ve currently settled with vanilla Arch with KDE (Gnome get it together) and a bunch of flatpaks for user software stuff. I really like rolling releases these days. Just keep the core install minimal and tight.
Also the Arch forum community is top notch.
With that said I would start with package manager and desktop GUI you like and then go from there.
Great news! Crazy to think that Valve is hijacking/liberating the Windows gaming library. You would think that Microsoft would be doing more to prevent this.