My journey went Ubuntu (2012) -> Kubuntu (2018) -> Manjaro (2020) -> Fedora KDE (2022)
Most computers I had were used and low-end so Linux was always my preferred OS, but I always dualbooted with the version of Windows or MacOS the machine came with when I could.
My current computers have been Linux only for a couple years now, thanks to Windows being a headache and MacOS being inflexible.
It says in the article that triple buffering only activates if your GPU struggles to render the desktop. That means old and weak iGPUs are getting this. For your desktop card nothing should change.
I’ve been using Linux off and on again for the past decade.
The original reason I used Linux was because as a kid I got stuck with whatever old laptop was laying around, so my dad would install Ubuntu to make it usable.
When I built my first computer a couple years ago and started using Windows 10, that’s when Windows stopped working for me. Nothing made me want to switch more than when the major Windows 10 updates broke my software every 6 months.
Its almost certainly a VirtualBox issue. I would suggest changing the graphics controller to one of the other options. I have my Linux VMs set to VMSVGA as that has had the fewest bugs.
If it makes you feel any better, VirtualBox 7 has had quite a few regressions specifically with the graphics stack and has caused problems with all of my VMs. My Windows 11 VM only rendered a black screen until 7.0.10 and all my other VMs are still using old versions of Guest Additions because of the instability with the newer versions.
In my experience, gaming distros primary benefit is being preconfigured with apps and patches you’d install on a normal distro.
For normal distros, this difference isn’t big enough to impact your distro choice in most cases. The reason these get recommended is due to their post-install setup being easier than the distro its based on, hence being friendlier to new Linux users.
However, for immutable distros this is a big factor as it reduces the need for layering. Layering makes updating much slower, so less is always better.