I would dual boot first. I'm doing that myself at the moment with Pop OS. I disconnected my existing drives leaving just the drive I'd install Linux to. Ran the installer, then reconnected. I hit f12 at boot to select startup. I did this to avoid dealing with grub or messing with the windows bootloader. I haven't had good experiences with it in the past.

My biggest problem with trying Linux at the moment is I have a USB audio mixer that Linux refuses to enable. I can tell it sees it, it just won't list it as a selectable audio device or send audio through to it. So I have no sound.