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I suggest trying Windows Subsystem for Linux. You'll get a simpler way to get familiar with the command line, which is the important part if you're interested in development.
That or dual boot, you don't need to set aside a large partition for messing around.
I respectfully disagree, as someone who's tried both WSL1 and 2, I'd avoid it. Not only does it not replace the experience of a proper Linux install, you run into weird issues or quirks that's caused by WSL, which is the last thing that someone new to Linux and trying to code at the same time, would want to experience. In my case, I had an issue with my Arch WSL2 install where the network would stop working for some weird reason. Tried a bunch of things, nothing worked, in the end I gave up on it because I wasted too much time on it, when I could've just used Hyper-V instead - which I did, and had no issues (which was also weird, considering WSL2 uses Hyper-V in the backend). Then the other weird issue was trying to clean up my broken WSL2 install - no matter what I did, I couldn't get my Arch install out of the
wsl --list --alllist - even though it didn't actually exist anywhere.And in case you ask, yes I did try other distros too, had the same issue with the network.
The whole experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth, like it was some unfinished beta product.
That's odd! I had no issues with the stock Ubuntu install. Installing CUDA on a Windows machine requires WSL2 now, but I didn't really use it for anything more than that, so I could've just not used it enough to find problems. As soon as I finished the semester that required proprietary software, I got rid of Windows entirely though.
IMO, as long as you get comfortable with the basics like navigating directories and moving files, installing and updating software (first through something like apt, compiling stuff manually isn't necessary at first), and managing some basic bash settings like aliases, you're pretty much set. At least, from a programmer's standpoint.
I dunno how well versed OP is in computers overall is the thing. The above is a good baseline, but you need a general understanding of how operating systems work in general to be really comfortable with something like Arch. Like you gotta know what a driver is before you can troubleshoot issues with your hardware, or if you're managing disks it's good to have an idea of how filesystems work. But that all comes with experience.
I use it daily for work and play, I agree for the longest time it had oddities around networking and file io specifically where it would be wonky, but honestly all that is smooth at this point. I’ve even had an entire gui running on mine after installing X11 and something like
gnome-desktop