Virtual machine is a good place to start I hadn’t even thought of. Live USB is a good follow up, though, as that allows you to check out driver compatibility.

I currently can’t offer much on which distros to try, I’m afraid; for various reasons, my Steam Deck is my daily driver, and SteamOS is good enough for my needs. I have tried Bazzite, but it was more buggy on the deck; that said, it is quite popular. Nobara install images aren’t done cleanly, it seems, and I was not impressed with the community support (basically got told I was imagining things when I asked for help). CachyOS looked interesting, but I want stability over bleeding edge features.

But wish you luck on your journey!

A little fun fact you may not know is many of these distributions are typically based off of another. Pick a ‘base distro’ to learn off of and if you ever decide to switch to another many of the shell commands will be the same.

Debian Based Distros:

• Debian
• Ubuntu/Kubuntu
• PopOS
• LinuxMint
• Raspberry Pi OS
• Kali Linux
• and more…

Arch Based Distros:

• Arch Linux
• SteamOS
• CachyOS
• Manjaro Linux
• Endeavour OS
• and more…

Fedora Based Distros:

• Fedora
• Nobara
• RisiOS
• ClearOS
• and more…

Presumably you’re backing up important files as a matter of course, not only when installing a new OS…