You could always still Ubuntu on a USB stick and then boot that and play around when time permits. Then when you need to get back to "work" you just reboot and pull the USB stick out.

Well it takes time to migrate from Windows. When MS mandated the COVID jab, I kicked MS to the curb. I was very surprised how well PowerShell works on linux. I started with system76.com POP!_OS running as a guest using VirtualBox. I'm now running multiple Linux VMs on system76.com hardware. I still have a Windows VM that I can power up if needed, but have not done that in a long time now. See cadayton.onrender.com/blog for some of the PowerShell accomplishments running on Linux.