Better? In some important ways (liek security) yes, in some ways no-
Have the best of both worlds- dual boot- with windows 7 and linux mint cinnamon edition- linux is my main os- i do nearly everything on it- except play windows only games and photoshop work- which is why i need windows 7- I’ve tried virtual machine on linux to run windows in and use photoshop- but no good- nor is it good for games- even under wine- so i dual boot-
Yes, once you find the version you like. Linux Mint is very stable as is straight up Ubuntu. Most any major version has what’s called a Live CD/USB version. It will run right off a USB thumb drive so you can try it out before you install it. Once you find one you like, it can install itself alongside windows, provided you have some hard drive space to spare. It’s not a bad idea to run Disk Defragmenter on windows first.
There’s tutorials all over the web for doing all this, video and articles with pics. Newer Win 10 machines can be tricky due to their hard drive management software in the BIOS. It’s not a windows thing but something that’s come about after win10 came out. When/if you search for tutorials, be sure to put “2020” in your search phrase to get articles/videos from this year.