>>2203475All good, happy to help!
There's a few differences between these distros, but I'll gloss over the few main ones:
- Pop!_OS, Mint and Manjaro are all based off of other distributions. Pop!_OS and Mint are based off of Ubuntu while Manjaro is based off of Arch.
The main difference here is the way the OS installs programs, which in linux is typically done in the terminal.
Fortunately there are graphical front-ends to the commands that function pretty similar to the App Store on macOS, so you might not notice much of a difference.
- Pop!_OS seems to offer a download that comes with NVIDIA drivers, which would be useful for you, though it doesn't look too difficult to install them on Manjaro post-install.
>The only thing I don't like about the latter is how its interface looksOne common misconception a lot of people coming into linux have is they associate the 'look' of the OS to the distribution. In reality, the 'Desktop Environment' (or DE) is what controls the look.
Pop!_OS only offers one DE, "GNOME", which also happens to be the most popular (and also most hated haha). Mint and Manjaro both offer 3 seperate DEs which you pick before you download them.
>Is it better to Dual Boot or use a VM?For your circumstance, I would say Dual Boot would be better to begin with. For a VM to be feasible for games you need to jump through a bunch of hurdles which I think gives a lot of new linux users a bad first impression. As you've got two drives, you could keep the Windows install on the first and put linux on the second, which should eliminate windows update breaking your install. When you turn on your PC you would get a menu similar to the picture I've attached.
All in all, Manjaro would probably be your best bet if you don't like how Pop!_OS looks.
