TLDR: You don't need a rolling release distro like Arch or its derivatives or any "gaming" distro for gaming anymore.

Many experiments have shown that these distros specifically "made for gaming" have no real advantages. If your friend is a beginner, I would absolutely not recommend Arch Linux, but rather Linux Mint. I have recently found this experiment: https://youtu.be/UtXw9on6qs4 (table at the end of the video) that supports this recommendation.

50% still on Windows 10 is crazy. What is Microsoft going to tell them next year when the support runs out?

Does anyone know if the Steam Hardware Survey identifies your OS even in the Flatpak version? Or will it detect the Freedesktop SDK?

That's true. And that's exactly why I give zero trust to any executable that I don't have the source code of. But there is a huge difference between running kernel level proprietary software and user space apps, which are easily at least sandboxable.

But don't forget our friends at Gentoo and SUSE.

I haven't used an Antivirus in years... That's one advantage of GNU OS's. I run cracks inside sandboxes which then run Wine and DXVK for compatibility.

How dare you? Haven't you seen the World News logo? This is a criticism-free zone.