Go here - https://www.linux.org/pages/download/
Choose your Flavor, use Rufus, https://rufus.ie/
Burn distro to a Thumb Drive
Boot to Thumb Drive, and choose run from here.
If you like the flavor you chose, on next boot to Thumb Drive, choose install to Disk.
You asked about testing. I offered a way to rapidly test different distros without nuking your current disk. Oh, and most can be found in a distro to run inside VMWare if you want. As for me, I find running things from a Thumb Drive first much easier. Don't like it, nuke the Thumb Drive and try something else. Other Anon is correct. All flavors have Dev Tools.
Kekked out loud with this! Creative Anon!