Honestly, I do not know the number of Linux distributions. All I know is that there is a lot. The first Linux I used was Ubuntu, one of the most popular ones in recent years. I have in the past, created dual boots alongside Windows on old laptops to see if it was a good option to replace Windows. As time goes on, older hardware have a hard time keeping up with newer operating systems and their updates. That was the reason for me to try out Linux in the first place.

I did not really get into the command line interface until the past few years. Most of my initial experimenting was with the graphical user interface. But using the CLI at first was tricky. So I took a course on Udemy.com and also looked at YouTube videos. With practice you get used to it. I am still not an expert as I still have to look up commands but I am getting there. I have experimented using different hypervisors such as VMWare Workstation, VirtualBox, and Windows WSL2. My go-to is Workstation of course.