Linux

My advice is, learning new things can be a pleasure, so try to improve your learning skills. Everything is possible then.

Before I could fully leave windows, I spent a lot of time being lost in Linux distrohopping and ricing without even fully understanding what I was doing. Without a solid setup to live in, Linux had a weird experimental feel and it got frustrating when I wanted stuff done.

Coming to your case, there are 2 different priorities here: daily driving and Linux proficiency. You're tied into windows for the daily driving bit for now so your main focus should be learning, and that probably won't need a dual boot right away.

First up is understanding why there are so many distributions. Linux is the kernel, the common skeleton that you can't use on its own. There are other modular bits that go on top to make a full fledged OS, and the choices of what those are is what makes a distribution. Learn more about the options available for the modular bits - the ones that you should concern yourself with for now are:

• package managers: the program responsible for installing and managing software. This is one of the main differences between the major popular variants of Linux(Debian, Arch, fedora etc). For example, on Debian and distros based on it, you'd use apt. That's why you would've probably used apt on Ubuntu, it's based on Debian.
• desktop environment: all the programs involved with the user interface - the main UI itself. This is a subjective thing and people use different desktop environments based on their workflow.

Once you get this modularity based perspective, distributions wont be overwhelming and vague. You'll understand why people are recommending mint or popOS:

• it's Ubuntu based and there are many popular Debian and Ubuntu based distros out there. You'll be able to get software easily and if there's some problem you need to debug, there's a relevant question and answer out there
• mint's desktop environment is cinnamon, which is simple, clean and not too jarring for people coming from windows

You'll also know, you can choose whatever you want as long as it's Ubuntu based for your learning phase. Only at that point I think it will make sense to dual boot. You can boot in for particular reasons instead of a vague "let me understand Linux". The reasons will be finding alternative software to daily drive, learning how to use the terminal or just getting comfortable with Linux in general. From there, you can find your own way or reach out to the community with questions specific for your use cases.

I just made the full time switch to pop os and I've been happy so far

The best advice I can give is to just use Linux. Back in early 2006 when I started switching over to Linux I would dual boot, and any time I ran into something that was hard to do on Linux I would just boot into Windows to save time. Eventually I decided to stick with it and not reboot when that would happen. Linux back then was not as user friendly as it is now, so for the most part this should be the exception and not the rule. Obviously some software is going to be Windows specific, but the best thing you can do to learn is just stick with Linux and use it.

As for distros, whatever is the most used which is probably Ubuntu right now, will be best as people will have plenty of answers and questions that will cover what you are going through compared to a niche distro. When you get more experience with Linux, you will get a better sense for what you want out of a distro like rolling releases like Arch, functional package management like with NixOS or whatever else may be important to you. So just stick with Ubuntu or whatever is more popular right now and reevaluate after you get to the point your comfortable with command line tools.

Install Linux Mint in a virtualbox VM. It gets up and running so quickly, and works extremely well.

I have been focusing more on learning Linux at work, between some Fedora VMs we use for various things, and the Mint VM I spun up myself. It’s great because jumping between windows and Linux is a simple matter of moving the mouse cursor to a different monitor. I usually just leave Linux Mint running full screen on one of my monitors.

I’m not experienced with lots of distros, but Mint is damned impressive.

I use OpenSUSE, because it has YaST, which is basically the Control Panel in Windows. Without it, I'd have to use the terminal. It also installs on just about anything.

Apparently ChatGPT is really good as a personal tutor. You can ask it specific questions and it will answer with detailed tutorials and step-by-step guides.

Get a pre-owned Thinkpad or Dell Latitude for cheap. Upgrade it if you want, especially with SSD & RAM. Get some Linux on it -- I recommend Linux Mint for ease of use.

Consider reading the content on Linuxjourney.com

The linux motto to any problem is "it's possible, but here are the pitfalls". You can do almost everything on linux (unlike windows), but the tradeoff is it can sometimes require more time to learn and troubleshoot issues. In my opinion, linux is great for those of us who dislike to use the mouse and take our hands off the homerow. Get used to using the terminal to launch apps, instead of clicking stuff on the desktop. Learn keyboard shortcuts. My recommendation is to use a window manager like i3 with an i3 status bar at the bottom. This will give you a minimal desktop, where you can move windows/tiles around all with keyboard shortcuts. Open apps with something similar to dmenu, where you just have to press a keyboard shortcut and type the first few letters of the app you want to open, and press enter. Learn vim-like keyboard navigation to edit text and reposition the cursor through the text all without the keyboard. Linux integration with this style of experience is vastly superior to Windows and Mac.

I have terrible distro ideas. I rock kubuntu or Fedora for basic server stuff. So I'd recommend dual booting Ubuntu or Kubuntu just cuz it's easy and you already have experince with it.

Mostly what I wanted to convey was a sense of excitement for you! No matter what option you end up doing there's so much to learn here. I remember when I was a very young lad learning how windows 95/98 worked. The jank.

FOSS Linux has that kinda jank. The unpolished functionality of OS' long forgotten. Idk. Makes me feel like a kid again.

I'm excited for you. Lmk what you end up doing, if you remember. Buying a laptop or dual booting or whatnot.