Advice then - if there is any chance of you setting up a VM on your Windows system to 'start' the Linux experience by messing with a sandboxed environment, so so. It will save you a HUGE amount of headaches come the time that you do a full Linux install.
Do a few VM if possible. One Fedora 27/28 x64. One CentOS 7 x64. One Debian. One Ubuntu.
We chose RHEL based (RedHat Enterprise Linux) because I personaly am RedHat fluent, and can back the OS itself. Any derivative distro of RHEL (like CentOS, Scientific Linux, Fedora (community based RHEL)) we can usually work with also once you learn the basis of the RHEL system. Same with Debian/Ubuntu except for one thing. The basis of using these systems is that you won't have the frustrating learning experience that RHEL based systems have, due to the support the dev provide in the Crypto community. We chose against the grain, and remain that way until ALL OS systems can become equal. This also means that one cannot learn much without being confronted with issues that require research and learnign to fix.
So it is up to you what your end goal will be. Easy compilation/install with a lot of support but learn little? Or difficult installation with little support, but learn a huge amount in the process?
#crysx