Linux

I'd actually recommend whatever it is that you use, OP. Having a friend who is intimately familiar with your distro is way more helpful than one that's theoretically even better but you have limited support for. If they want to make the jump later, they can always do what I did and somehow accidentally become an arch (btw) linux guy after a year in the ecosystem (goddamnit how did this happen, i just wanted to keep using my old craptop, not become a thigh high socks guy).

edit: I'm reading that you're also an archfreak, so I'd suggest Manjaro instead. It's got an easier learning curve and guis, but is arch-based.

I really like Bazzite and the universal blue project (Bluefin and Aurora) in general. It is the fastest way to get a stable, usable linux installation with a bunch of QoL tweaks without having to follow a "here's top 10 things to do" guide after install. Starting from a stable install is the best way to get used to linux, imo. If you are coming from windows or a mac and the system borks itself or throws up wierd errors during installation or an update, or you have to follow a bunch of guides inputting commands you are unfamiliar with to get basic funcionality working, you aren't going to trust the system enough to switch over to full time. A stable, well functioning system upon install is essential for new users.

It is very possible to do development work, however you will most likely need to be familiar, or willing to become familiar with, a containerized work flow. This is probably a good practice to get into regardless of distro you use. Bluefin/Aurora are specifically is targetted towards developers.

As far as packages go, you use bazaar for flatpak/gui apps, brew for CLI apps, distrobox for any random program from a different distro you might need, and podman for docker images. Layering is a last resort and should be reserved for apps that need to interact on a system level, most often VPNs with custom installers and some password managers.

Flatpak will be set up on install with decent defaults, so permission issues are less of an issue. Distrobox is also set up and easy to dive into if needed. Setting it up this way seperates user apps and system apps and makes the install much less prone to breaking un updates. It also updates in the system and flatpaks/brew apps in background without bothering the user, you just need to restart the machine every once in a while to upgrade to the next version, although this behavior can be modified with a simple terminal command.

Relying on flatpaks/brew means those apps will be up to date and you don't have to wait sometimes months for the distro to get an upgrade, which can happen with non-rolling release distros. Since they are all fedora based, the system will be fairly up to date while not bleeding edge like a rolling release distro, so it is rare to experience kernel regressions or those types of issues.

The default file system is btrfs with seperate system and home partitions, and it's set up to be able to roll back to a previous version from the grub menu if an update causes a problem. This is possible with other distros, but can take quite a bit of effort. I've done it in debian before and it was not intuitive, and if something went wrong after following the guide I followed, I would have no idea how to fix it and would just have to nuke the isntall and start over.

The main difference between the universal blue releases is that Bazzite has steam installed at the system level, and has Gnome, KDE, or KDE plus Steam Bigpicture modes available. Bluefin is Gnome focused, and Aurora is KDE focused, but steam is only available as a flatpak. It is easy to swtich between each release with a simple terminal command and there is almost no risk to your user files when you do so. It just swaps out the system layer and leaves your user partition alone.

This set up will not be limiting or cause problems unless you are wanting to explore different window managers or desktop environments outside of KDE or Gnome, or have an obscure device that the bazzite maintaners haven't installed support for, or have to use a vpn with a custom installer that needs system access, or use a password manager that isn't configured well in flatpak.

Bazzite 100%. It's the best out of the box gaming distro, and bonus points for immutability (not that your friend needs to know what that is).

I do not have first hand experience, but have been told that while Bazzite is excellent for gaming, the immutable nature of complicates matters when it comes to software development, dev tools and stuff of that nature.

he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.

If you're able to be there for the install, then great. I've had a couple of times where, due to certain hardware, it needs a different sound server or some other workaround. In an extreme case, you might need to fallback to a second choice of distro.

but I have been hearing a lot about Bazzite lately and see that it offers a very nice gaming experience

Is there anything specific you've heard that applies to your friend's needs? (Honest question, I haven't looked deep into it.)

If it's just small things like 'Steam and [etc] is installed already', then you can just do that easily anyway.

no typical package management like apt or pacman as I browse their docs, instead it relies heavily on Flatpaks [snip]

Keep in mind that Mint uses apt and (optionally, but IMO inevitably) Flatpaks integrated in their package manager, which has gotten much smoother but still is two different systems which can cause confusion. I don't know how Bazzite handles this.

I've been using bazzite for going on 2 years now and it's still as good and as easy to use as it was the day I got it. I wouldn't want to use anything else.

Bazzite has newer drivers, ditto for CachyOS Handheld Edition for another SteamOS clone.

Recommend the one you use yourself so you are able to help them in the best way possible.

If you are afraid of being limited by flatpak for bazzite, (or any other distro but arch), you can use this :

an Arch container using distrobox that can run in every distro.

This way, you'll have access to the AUR and arch repos in general.

Fedora KDE.

Steam and Heroic work fantastic on it.

Has its own App Store for searching for stuff.

Looks similar-esque to Windows so getting around is less painful.

In order of ease of use; Nobara (Fedora based), popOS (Mint/Ubuntu based), cachyOS (Arch based, easy enough to use but might be overwhelming because of the amount of linux jargon going on) over bazzite, depending on your friend ability and wish to tinker around with his OS.

I have had problems even dragging dropping files across apps in bazzite and other immutable distros like bluefin. If your friend is interested in tinkering just a little bit then he will be be banging his head across a wall with bazzite. The community support for these relatively new immutable distros is also quite bad when it comes to edge cases.

Definitely not bazzaite, it has lots of unremovable bloatware and since it doesn't have native package manager it will be a problem. For gaming i propose cachyos, it focuses a lot on performance in games. They have their own proton, kernel and they even had their own browser

He should start with Mint, learn the system in general, and then move to Bazzite, CachyOS, Pika or Nobara, which are more game centric.

I'd say Bazzite but I would warn him (and since he's a developer already it might not be a big deal) if he's looking to do any sort of dev work or whatever with Bazzite then prepare to utilize stuff like distrobox, flatpaks, etc to accomplish stuff like that.

That being said as a dev and gamer myself if my first linux experience was Bazzite I might get annoyed. Mint is a great first experience. when I originally tried it well over a year ago though I did have issues with my Nvidia GPU on it and gaming wasn't super great BUT it's been awhile since I've used mint so that may have changed.

Honestly I would suggest start with Mint and just drive it for a couple weeks. If he likes it but feel it's limited for some things then that's when he can expand out to different distros. And like I said maybe gaming on Mint has improved since I last used it. But if he's comfortable with running distrobox and containers then Bazzite is fine.

I use CachyOS for over a year. Mainly for playing.

I think Bazzite is the "easiest". But I think it would be very difficult to tinker for someone not used to Linux. It's the plug and play option. For me the fact that bazzite tries to be immutable is a very good plus for stability on the long run. And somehow fits well for gaming on Linux. The drawback is that these immutable distro are hard to tinker with if you dont have experience with immutable package managers and so on.

CachyOS has maybe a more traditional structure but should offer good performance too.

There is also Nobara and Pop OS.

I'm on PoPOS but it's too recent for me to give feedback for gaming. But it should work well too.