TL;DR yes, popOS is perfect for that

My personal getting started advice is as follows

• use kali Linux in a virtual machine because haha funny 1337 haxor

• install mint/popOS/ubuntu on either a virtual machin, a spare laptop, or dual boot if you have a spare drive

• I used mint for school and random tinkering and just gradually got more familiar with the random things I wanted to do or fix

• this was last year so I’m no where near qualified to talk like a guru of ancient wisdom, take all of this with a grain of salt or possibly just burn it

Similar to you

• Kali in VM because hacker -Flush Windows and install mint cuz I think I’m a Linux pro -Go back to Windows a few months later because did not know that wine existed
• Go back to Mint after a couple of months cuz Windows was worse. -Stay with mint for a year and break some nvidia packages
• Got annoyed with the lack of customisibility of Mint and got an AMD GPU so jumped to Artix (systemd-less Arch)
• Still daily drive Artix.
• Installed Debian on a home server