There is no magic "boost my FPS" button on windows, and there isn't one on linux either. That being said, if you have the patience and knowhow to set it up, Gentoo might be marginally faster.

Choose any, they will all boost fps by a bit if you install all the correct drivers, antergos and ubuntu are some of the easier ones to install, if you need help installing it or setting up a dual boot I have a friend you can talk to

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ubuntu mate is cool
any linux distro has better perf than windows i think

Ubuntu and arch are the most user friendly. If you ever want to switch to something slightly more complex, debian is pretty popular.

Yeah of course, I have a laptop with ubuntu and windows 10 on the same hard drive http://steamcommunity.com/id/burningsmile and you can mount your drive so that you can access windows files from ubuntu and the other way around, but keep in mind you will need to install the Linux version of tf2

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I had good results with lubuntu and got a sizeable fps boost, enough to boost it from jittery to smooth on my laptop (I don't have the exact numbers because my laptop stopped booting to windows 7 and 10 entirely). Also comes with other benefits like windowed borderless having no input lag, which is a leg up over ubuntu since it has a desktop compositor.

I'd imagine any lightweight environment distro would be great for fps, and any decent distro at all should still be better than windows.

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Linux is also more stable that windows, and has a lot more free software, it takes a bit getting used to but if u follow directions you'll be fine. The only issue is that some software doesn't support Linux

Highly recommend to get Manjaro

I'd say Solus would be the best choice. It's kind of like arch on the technical level but with the easiness of ubuntu. It's made by a former intel dev and shares a lot of optimizations with Clear Linux. They also came up with this clever thing - https://github.com/solus-project/linux-steam-integration. It replaces the outdated steam runtime with the latest and more optimized system libraries. It's also available for arch afaik. Last I checked the entire system consumes 300-400mb of ram and boots in 1 sec off an SSD.

a lot of linux distros (debian-based ones like ubuntu seem to) have some weird build-in accel for mice that you have to manually disable somewhere hidden. there's also a lot of quirks with using proprietary shit with linux like nvidia drivers that can make them quite ugly and fiddly

If you're going to take the Arch based path, avoid Antergos and Manjaro and just install Arch. I don't know what packages and configurations those two come with, but I had both break completely on me through regular update cycles (-Syu-ing daily). Two years on Arch with no problems.

If you want an easy install, look elsewhere. (Though the Arch install isn't difficult once you understand what the commands are doing).

Also, look into the linux-ck patchset, it may give you some better performance.

There are some different things that will affect your performance on Linux.

1) Drivers. In some drivers, you won't be able to use high texture quality due to some problems with large texture stores in 32-bit processes. Also of importance is getting the latest drivers. You should be using a git version of Mesa for Intel or AMD, or the latest drivers from Nvidia.

2) CPU scheduler. It is important to use a desktop oriented scheduled like MuQSS.

3) Kernel Hz. If your kernel is configured with a low hz, you will get less FPS and longer startup times, unless you have a kernel with the high resolution timeouts patch included in the ck patchset.

4) Disk scheduler. A lot of the frame hitching in TF2 is caused by delayed disk loading for sound and models. If you get a desktop oriented disk scheduler, like BFQ, TF2 will have less problems with the disk.

5) Process prioritizing. You can use Ananicy to prioritize the TF2 process on the CPU and IO.

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there is no directx on linux. its a proprietary api. tf2 opengl on linux runs at an equivalent of dxlevel 90-95 im not quite sure. this is because valve developed their own translation layer for calls

for discord you can install it through aur https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/discord/ which will sort out dependencies for you automatically and act like a normal package part of the system instead of a seperate application

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https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/libc%2B%2B/

look at the pinned comment, it fixes the problem youre having

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I would also recommend installing and enabling irqbalance.

You got memed into installing arch.
1) arch is a DYI distro
2) it might break any time you update it especially when you don't know what you're doing
3) you don't gain anything by using arch except for the ability to customize it as you desire and a large selection of software

Do yourself a favor and install solus. It's as optimized for desktop usage as it can get tbh. Something you won't get with arch unless you do some manual patching.

I believe that is meant for servers. I have never seen any benchmarks for that patch either.

does esea client run under WINE
even if it did I'd be scared of getting esea banned or something

I wouldn't recommend running an anticheat or any system verification stuff under WINE.

The point of pacman based distros like those are so you don't have to go thru the tedious process of typing every command just to install. Also because the average person isn't willing to learn and install it manually and want their OS to just work.

How did you get Manjaro to break? Did you try updating after installing an acnient build? I've never had my system break