I've used Windows my whole life, except for a 2006 Mac OS X I got when I was a kid, and I never thought about switching away from it. However, in recent times, I've grown to care more about FOSS and customizability, and I'm also a bit more tech-savvy than the average person, I'd say. As such, I've of course heard of Linux, and didn't realize how simple it was to install certain distros until my brother installed Linux Mint on an old laptop he repaired. I want to play around with it and see if it's something I'd be interested in, but at the moment I only have one computer, which is my laptop, and I don't think it'd be a good idea to do a full switch over when all my important stuff is on here. As such, I've heard people talk about "dual booting" which from what I understand means having both Windows and Linux on the computer, and picking which to use on start up? This sounds like a perfect environment to play around with Linux, assign it like 50GB of space (Is that enough?) and see if I like it, but I'm very ignorant about a lot of things related to Linux, and don't want to start playing around with something I don't understand. Advice would be appreciated.
Sadly there's a few too many replies for my busy self to respond to. I'll say thanks for the help though, I appreciate it!
Yep, run Linux in a virtual machine first, or create a bootable USB drive and run it from there. You should be able to get a good feel for how things work that way.
If you do decide to dual-boot, you'll need that bootable USB drive because you can't resize a mounted partition. You'll need to be careful because you can bork your Windows install if you're not, but I've found most instructions are straightforward and easy to follow.
Also, depending on which version of Windows you have, you might have to disable the TPM which means authenticating your Bitlocker key once you're done and you re-enable it.
But hey, the fun of Linux is figuring these kinds of things out. Good luck and have fun!