Beginner Distro recommendations - eviltoast

Long overdue, I know, but looking to start at least partially migrating and working with Dual boot, coming from Windows 10 (putting off 11 as much as possible)…

I have limited Linux experience, mostly in college several years back.

I work remotely with Windows software development, including Winforms, Asp.net, .net core, etc. Not sure what I need to best work with these, particularly Winforms. That may not even be possible, I know.

Looking for any general guidance/recommendations.

Long term, I’m interested in migrating as much as possible, outside of whatever I have to keep up for work… starting with dual boot options then moving towards linux as a primary driver. I have an old media server (also win10, not win11 compatable) not really doing much but running plex when I need it… would love to also eventually poke around with Home Assistant or similar, maybe some LLM tinkering etc.

If this isn’t a good community for this, I apologize, and please point me to a better one if you know of one.