The original SteamOS was based on Debian. But that’s been unmaintained for years. Don’t use it.

SteamOS 3.5 is currently available for the Steam Deck only and is based on Arch Linux. Valve plans on generally releasing it but they haven’t yet.

The latest Debian or Ubuntu should work fine.

Unless you're trying to play multiplayer games with incompatible anticheat you'll most likely be just fine. There are obviously edge cases, like OP, where something is just not working right, but I gamed on Linux for hundreds of hours last year with basically no issues at all.

@Bustedknuckles @MrKurteous
Bazzite gpu nvidia

Chimera os gpu amd

I don't know if they support the OG Steam OS anymore, and if they do, it's not going to be a good experience for regular desktop use. Steam Deck is Arch based, and I think there's where their efforts are going these days.

That said, if you want something with a nice out of the box experience for gaming, consider Nobara Linux. It's based on Fedora and maintained by the person who does the Proton-GE releases (Glorious Eggroll), which have fixed that aren't in the official Steam Proton releases (e.g. fixes for specific games that haven't landed yet). It should be a pretty good experience.

However, just installing Mint Debian edition should work fine, you'll just need to make sure you get the right drivers and that's about it.