I'm a Linux Mint "fanboy" sort of. Have used it for the past 6-7 years and have managed to get a quite tricky installation done on my new PC. Linux Mint is similar to Ubuntu, on which it is based, with some differences in the GUI (I love the good old menu button
).
Linux Mint is well integrated and practically everything you need to do can be done from within a GUI application. Unless you want to do some more advanced stuff.
As for gaming, I agree with what's been said before, with one notable exception: given the right hardware and skills, you can get a Linux machine that runs Windows on top in a Virtual Machine with native graphics performance. I just did that, but believe me, it's not for the impatient.
The solution is called Xen hypervisor with VGA passthrough. Sounds difficult? It is and chances are you won't have suitable hardware to support that. However, if you DO have the hardware or want to give it a try, let me know to give you some pointers and instructions.
My machine is running now Windows and Linux side by side at the same time, with full graphics acceleration in both systems. Windows Experience Index is 7.0 - my graphics card is the weakest point (7.0); CPU is 7.8; RAM 7.9; and disk 7.8 (using SSD). By the way, 7.9 is the highest mark for current PCs. And I have enough spare resources on my Linux dom0 (Xen talk for administrative domain or operating system) to do other stuff along Windows. If I don't use Windows, I just shut it down and regain the full CPU etc. resources for Linux. Real cool. Unfortunately this requires a full Windows retail license which is more expensive than an OEM license that often comes with a PC.