Here's what I'd do: VirtualBox.

A full-featured "virtual machine monitor" that runs on everything, that's backed by possibly the largest software corporation in the world, and that's absolutely free. Set up a virtual machine, install Linux on it, and "go to town." The Windows "host" environment will never be affected by anything that your Linux "guest" does. And, your Linux will run (almost ...) as fast as it would on "native hardware." (Typically, the guest's "hard drives" are served by ordinary host disk-files, although this isn't your only option.)

"Dual booting," in my opinion, these days "is for the birds."

Virtualization, these days, is fully supported by hardware features of the underlying CPUs. These features are used both for "virtual machines" and for "containers." And, today, most of the web-sites and servers that you are ever likely to encounter – undoubtedly including this one – are built on top of it. Whether you choose to run Windows under Linux or vice-versa, the technology is entirely perfected. And, thanks to the generosity of Oracle Corporation, it is free.

"Not sure which distro you like best?" Hey, create a bunch of VMs and install each candidate into each of them.

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My antix live usb's remastered and installed using the live usb tools is just the bomb and boots on most anything. Even older gear. One can encrypt the file partitions also if ya wish. If ya know what you are doing.

https://antixlinux.com/the-most-exte...on-the-planet/

It is setup for newer gear also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGi9jd1qW8g

Yep. The other fan boy who knows what is best when it comes to his live usb tools on his hardware.
We shared with MX linux also.
One can install all kinds of tin foil hat stuff during a live session and save it if using persistence option. Even newer kernels.



Tails is slang for when we ride motorcycles.

Thumb drives are cheap, buy a pack of em; keeping in mind this is just another opinion to try them all and form your own-e.g: https://distrowatch.com/search-mobil...=Active#simple
...opinions that is.

Edit\add: Unless LFS?

PS. Puppy Linux in my experience comes close to this also. And is not hard.
If ya fear root. Yodel for spot or fido.

https://www.lifewire.com/install-pup...-drive-2202096

http://wikka.puppylinux.com/spot?redirect=no

Edit: Proved long ago when I installed Puppy on a 128mb sd card out of old kodak camera. I had to put the save files in my Windows gear that I ran it on. Puppy would find them when asking which sfs I wanted to load.

citation: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...8/#post5682006

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...9/#post6195483

Puppy came to mind for me too, got to love a save file.

I also thought maybe you could set up grub bootloader on the laptop and just have microcoughed-windblow$ as the default to boot after a few seconds except when you plug in? Basically plug in the USB and install a full-blown Linux on it.

You could perhaps also accomplish everything you're trying to do with just the Tor Browser Bundle... correct me if I'm wrong but it deletes everything on exit?

It's actually "backed" (developed) by a large corporation who has quite arguably been as hostile to free software as Microsoft. Incidentally, those who were previously involved in the development of OpenSolaris, MySQL and OpenOffice may hold different opinions to yours.

99.9_repeating_% of* us* have proprietary hardware blobs!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBoxLive free or die trying; adaptations, facts and opinions till death.