Hi, I am eager to understand the Linux File System and how it all works. I am more or less teaching myself and am wondering if making a virtual machine I can play around in without damaging my system is possible and if so how to do it. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time!

Very possible, and there are multiple ways to accomplish this project. A full hypervisor will work, such as VirtualBox or QEMU Commerical VMWARE has a free option I believe). A lighter option for a linux system host is a full install container using Linux Containers, LXC, or OpenVZ

If you are currently running Windows, I recommend using VirtualBox. It is easy, free, well documented, and there is a ton of public support because MANY of us here have used it before.

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Thank you for taking the time to respond. I haven't been on here in awhile but I will look into your suggestion. Greatly appreciated!

Currently if you run VMWare, virtualbox or Microsofts VM you almost can't make any changes to the host (windows) system by any sort of command or task. The one exception would be to go outside of the current design and use a physical disk instead of a virtual hard drive.

A VM program usually allows you to build a virtual computer. The first steps are to create a virtual hard drive. That is a file (or set of files) that appear as real files to the host. They appear as a hard drive to the client OS and don't affect any other of the hosts files.

I'd like to suggest, though, that if you can, if you have the spare disk space, build a full dual-boot install.
I guarantee you it will be a lot more fun.

Definitely worth playing with a VM to start with. I recently tested out Debian 10 from Ubuntu 18.04 - liked it so much I then wiped Ubuntu for Debian 10!

Another option which I have used is to put Linux on spare laptops - I seem to collect them and Linux on an old Windows laptop makes it run like a brand new beast!

For home use, I'd definitely recommend VirtualBox.

Here's a good tutorial: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-use-virtualbox/

I second this. If you don’t want to dual boot you can surely find a dirt cheap box on Craigslist or elsewhere. Linux doesn’t need much horsepower!

VMs are definitely a way to go, especially if you aren’t comfortable dual booting.

Thank you everyone for the advice... I will look into mentioned options... Be blessed.