Many (if not most) linux distros have a 'live USB' option, where you can boot into a fully functional system contained within a USB drive, without making any changes to your computer.

If all you want to do with it for now is 'playing around with it', then that would be a great solution. Lets you know how well it works on your hardware, doesn't have the slowdown issues of a VM*, doesn't require any drastic changes and has no risk of breaking anything.

*A live USB will still be a bit slower than a real installation in some respects, especially when it needs to read anything from storage, since USB storage is much slower than your hard drive.

You can! You already have Windows, so your dual boot would be fine. Grab a easy to use Linux Distro like Mint or Ubuntu and just install, it will keep you existing Windows install as is and install linux on the side. However, If you install Linux first and then Windows you have to restore you grub etc. because Windows being Windows will destroy your dual boot setup.

But in your case you have Windows already so you will be fine!

You have two options: create a new partition and dual boot, or run a virtual machine on windows to try it. The VM solution is the easiest, but it's also a bit slower.

Elementary OS is very Mac Like

not an answer to your question, but I personally never felt dual-booting or VM's were a good way to get into Linux. If your experience is the same, you might enjoy just getting a different computer for Linux. E.g. you could get a raspberry pi to use as a Syncthing-server, or an old laptop if you have a stationary computer-

As for the aesthetic - if you're new to Linux, you should not prioritize aesthetics when picking a distro. Find something reasonably stable and well supported, like Mint or Kubuntu, and play around with themes and such in stead.

You would first use a disk tool to make a new partition on your drive(s) and then choose that as where you want to install when running an installer, usually from a USB drive that runs when booting the PC.

I put Linux on an external 2.5 inch SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure. That way I could disconnect the Linux drive if I needed to boot Windows, that way Windows couldn't accidentally bork my Linux install.

When I didn't end up booting Windows for a month, I removed windows and installed Linux on the internal nvme drive. That was 18 months ago and I haven't looked back

Install it on an old computer, if you mess something up you can just start over again.

Not the best option for everything but you can test distros online. https://distrosea.com/

Read this

You don't need to use arch, but it's a good starting point. Google any words you don't know as soon as you read them.

If you have some money to spare buy the cheapest ssd and use that drive for linux and as your boot device.

But start with a vm first. It can't be easier.

Using multiple OSes in parallel is called "dual booting" and it's not too hard to do. (Another commenter mentioned VMs. Also possible, plus is no usb needed, but you get reduced performance and imo it's more complicated to set up).

You need a blank USB stick (or one you don't care about destroying data on). You can write an ISO to it using rufus. Or if you trust enough the author's included binary blobs, you can use Ventoy which lets you multiple ISOs onto the flash drive, that you want to try on your PC more quickly. If you have a DVD drive that's a classic option, but be aware that some newer ISOs have started going past the 4.7GB single layer limit. At startup mash the F2, F9, F10, F12 or Del key depending on your motherboard maker and choose to boot your boot drive or change its boot priority up. Alternatively from inside Windows, hold Shift and click Restart, and select the option to boot from your other device.

Now if you just want to play around for one session only to do a very cursory test of the look and feel, most ISOs come with a live environment which loads into your RAM and goes away when you power down.

If you've settled on one to have more persistently, go through the install menu and select the option to install "alongside Windows", exact language varies by your distribution. The only thing to look out for is that if you see a message that says "If you continue, changes will be made to your disk", or "your disk will be erased/formatted", triple check that you select the "alongside" or "dual-boot" option because the latter message indicates that you didn't and the OS installer is about to replace Windows entirely.

This is years ago, but elementaryOS was the most mac-like in my opinion. MATE desktop (GNOME2 successor) has a "Cupertino" customization preset that mimics macOS in menu styling. However, with any Linux OS, you can get the Plank launcher (the latest version seems to be under the "Plank Reloaded" name) to get the iconic mac appbar thingy.

The usual options are live-usbkeys, dual-boot, and VM. All have their pros and cons. I'm not fond of any of them. Live keys are slow, windows updates occasionally break dual-boot. VM on a windows host is... blegh.

I'd suggest pulling your existing drive and shoving it in a drawer. It stays safe, ready for you to swap back at any time you want. Now you're free to experiment all you want.

If you're already comfortable with Windows, you can install that in a VM on your Linux host. That's your crutch to fall back on until you're comfortable with Linux. That would be my first significant Linux project if I were starting today instead of 20 years ago.

Yes, you can make your pc dual boot. Many guides are out there. Elementary linux is probably what you are looking for.

You could install and use WSL... Just depends on what you're really wanting to do.

For me the only reason I don't switch to linux is Flight Simulator 2020. Still not fully sure if it works correctly.