@SeaFury I tend to eschew making specific distro recommendations. There's such a fabbo cornucopia of delights available to us, & peeps' personal needs, wants & idiosyncrasies are so diverse that Peep A having the arrogance / hubris to recommend a specific distro to Peep B, in complete ignorance of their unique scenario, is just icky.

That said, i am happy to suggest a methodology you might wish to consider. Fwiw, this is what i did once i discovered #Linux in 2013 & is how i began my journey to 100% Linux / #FOSS since 2015.

• install #VirtualMachine software on your host pc [albeit your options are much better if lucky enough to have a spare pc lying around]
• download myriad diverse distro #ISOs, create as many VMs as you can eat for each of these ISOs, install them in said VMs, then play with them to your heart's content to get a feel for a shortlist of candidate distros & #DesktopEnvironments &/or #WindowManagers best matching your personal preferences
• once you've eventually decided on one or three finalists, burn those ISOs to #USB stick/s [or use #Ventoy], then boot your pc into each USB & explore their #LiveEnvironment [they're running only in RAM here, not yet touching your HDD/SSD at all]. This shows you if each distro plays nicely with your hardware or not.

Later, once you've chosen your penguin, & if you only have one pc, yes you might install it in a #DualBoot arrangement as others have already said. Or... you could do this if you like:

• wipe the drive & make it fully Linux
• install the VM software
• create a VM for windoze
• install windoze in it
• install all the specialist s/w you need in that virtual windoze
• each day when work / research is over, sleep or SD the VM then delight in your native penguin!

Fwiw. Or not. 🤷‍♀️

My #liveenvironment flow with @[email protected] and @[email protected] :

1. Make changes on remote pharo image. If the data was not touched just save.
2. Hit Save button in Android Studio.
3. Flutter live reloads and fetches data from backend.