One of those Linux posts...

I would stick to something mainstream, so that it will be easier to get help if needed. Most people choices these days, at least as much as I can see are - Linux Mint, Arch Linux and it's derivatives (for example EndeavourOS, CachyOS), Fedora and it's derivatives (for example Nobara) and OpenSUSE.

Dual-booting on the same drive shouldn't be a big issue, just don't do Windows Updates without waiting like a week before doing it, so that you can see if there are reports of the update ruining the Linux's EFI files.

Just make a new partition with your free space and install the Linux distro on that partition. Or you can make another partition yourself for the Linux's EFI files (something like 1GB of size), that should help avoid the issues that might arise from Windows Updates.

I've been using Linux Mint for 8 months now as my main operating system (dual boot, but never had to boot into windows - just didn't need to). My impressions of the OS are excellent. So far it's the best and most trouble-free Linux distribution I've ever tried (before I switched to Linux I tried different distributions from time to time). I have tried: Ubuntu (almost all variations), MX Linux, Debian, Pop!_OS, Manjaro, Fedora. On each of these distributions sooner or later some problems popped up. Mint, on the other hand, does not give me any trouble and works like clockwork. I am so used to and love this OS that I can't even look at Windows anymore. 99% of the games I've run have worked without any problems.
Dual boot works without problems if it is on the same disk. You don't need any guides, just start with a bootable flash drive, choose a disk and how much free space to take, and then the installer will do everything by itself.

As for Garuda Linux. I haven't tried it myself, but I watched a review by a linux blogger, and his conclusion (like mine) was that it's just a piece of garbage.
PikaOS - first time I've heard of it. But it doesn't even have a page or rating on Distrowatch. Also, since November 14, they stopped publishing source code on GitHub, which also does not inspire confidence.
In general, I wouldn't recommend digging into any obscure unpopular distributions. They are in their place for a reason. As a rule, there are no hidden gems.

Gaming on Linux is largely dealt with by the native Steam client and Steam's Proton. Just make sure your distro has a current Steam package.

Since you have experience, I think Arch would be the best choice for you, but there's support for gaming on any distro. Arch's Steam requires multilib, and you should get the proper Vulkan driver mainly for Proton emulation.

I've been using Linux as my personal daily driver for 20+ years, and gaming for about the last 10. Currently using Pop!_OS (desktop) and Gentoo (laptop).
I'm far from an expert, because for at lest the last 5+ years, Linux just works (for me), and I don't spend much time fiddling with it. Yes it has it's quirks (usually hardware related), but I'm sure Windows does too.

Regarding choice of distro. It's a bit of a minefield! Personally I would recommend starting with something mainstream, mature and with a large community (Mint, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS), before looking at one of the many specialised distros (there are several gaming oriented distros). You can even install SteamOS.

Considering PikaOS, it looks nice, but I'm not sure it's stable enough. It started as a copy of Nobara, but replaced the Fedora base with Ubuntu, and then again switching to Debian unstable (sid) base. I imagine upgrading due to these changes would be difficult and require a full re-install. The community is small: they have no forums, Reddit is dead, and only offer support on Discord.

I suggest getting a large USB stick, and installing Ventoy to it. You then just copy any Linux distro's Live DVD iso file over to it (i.e. without installing directly to USB) allowing you to choose which distro to try at boot time. This lets you quickly get a feel for many different distros, and how they behave with your hardware, without having to install anything to hard disk.

Before installing, if you've anything you do not want to lose make a back up. The simplest way, if you have space on another disk is to just image the disk (using something like Clonezilla which you just add to your Ventoy USB).

I recommend WSL2 for programming and just stick to Windows. Dual boot never works out for me. I end up just staying in Windows.

Last time I tried linux, I spent like 4 hours trying to get my mouse's extra buttons to work and then gave up. If you like spending your days editing config files instead of actually getting anything done, give linux a try.

Any modern, popular and competent distro, as I've heard of Mint, should offer you to make/use a partition somewhere and detect and configure all other OSes installed for multi-booting. i can't say for sure with Mint, but I bet it does it well.

The first time I tried Linux was with Ubuntu and it did all that perfectly, and it was more than 15 years ago.

If you don't see that happening while trying to install, then abort and go to some Mint forums and ask about it. Or maybe you'd like to do it before trying.

Damn, now I want to try Mint too...

Ubuntu hasnt given my anything except trouble.Linux Mint is okay.But Windows remains my main workhorse for programming and gaming.Maybe stick to Windows 10 till Steam launches SteamOS on PC..or Linux Mint till then.

Like others said, I would stick to mainstream distros, as it can be hard to get support when using a very niche one, and things will eventually go wrong, and because you're relatively new to Linux you will need help when googling eventually fails you (and it often does; Linux issues seem to come in two types: the ones that are easily fixable one google query away and the ones that no one else seems to have experienced before and therefore you can't get any solutions by googling).

There are distros that, while they can work for beginners, are clearly meant for people who have enough experience to fix things when they go wrong, people who know what they're doing; the best-known, most obvious examples are Arch and Gentoo. If you are adamant about learning as much as possible as quickly as possible and have a lot of time to burn in doing that, they're probably the best choices. Personally, I've used Arch and I've been using one of its derivatives for many years; I've learned a great deal with them, but I've also had enough headaches that I'm probably jumping to another distro when I switch to a new machine, especially now that I simply don't have time to go fixing stuff that breaks because of bleeding edge.

On the other hand, if you want something that just works and doesn't give you too much trouble, skip those and go most anywhere else. Mint and any Ubuntu flavors are popular choices (Kubuntu is probably the easiest, most natural choice among Ubuntu flavors, as KDE's look-and-feel is probably closest to Windows and it's got tons of features, but this is largely a matter of taste). If you want a stable system that won't give you headaches, Debian is also nice. I also know people who swear up and down by Fedora or Suse but I have no experience with them.

Honestly, though, Linux is set up so you can just jump distros without a lot of pain, so go with anything that looks good, and, if it doesn't work out, move to something else. Set up your /home directory in a separate partition (most installers offer to do it for you, and most that don't do that at least offer to let you partition stuff yourself and you can figure it out with some googling, it's not hard) and you can just wipe the / partition (also known as root partition, basically equivalent to C: on Windows) and install a new distro and software any time you like. Bonus: all your config is inside the /home directory, so you can jump distro and all software is still configured the way you had it.

All that said, I don't know what dual-booting is like these days (I jumped ship to Linux several years ago and haven't had Windows directly on metal since, only inside a virtual machine), but most everything should be using Grub 2 as a bootloader, and Grub is pretty mature and feature-rich, so you shouldn't have any problems, regardless of distro; Grub knows how to handle Windows installations without messing them up. Be warned, though, that installing, rescuing, and possibly updating Windows can/will result in your (multi-OS-aware) bootloader being overwritten with the Windows one, at which point you will be unable to boot into Linux, so remember to have a way to rescue your existing Linux installation and reinstall the boot loader. Usually the install media has the tools for that, but you may need to look into how to use them (they're often command-line stuff, so I hope you're not afraid of the big text-only screen where you type things and the computer answers in text and mice are a foreign concept).

Also, while you can set some space aside from an existing partition to create a new one, this is NOT RECOMMENDED because there is a risk (though fairly small) of data loss; I would just use a new drive. If you only have 50 GB free, you probably need a new one anyway. And if the systems are on different drives, that has the extra bonus of not needing a bootloader aware of multiple systems, since you can ultimately switch which HDD you will load OS from on the BIOS, and Windows is also unlikely to nuke your Linux-aware bootloader when it's on a different drive.

For greatest independence of the two OSs, if you have room in your computer, have two hard drives!!

Remove the Windows hard drive
Install Linux on the other drive
Re-add the windows drive
Chose which OS you want as your main drive. Both Windows (via 3rd party apps like Grub2Win) and Linux (natively) can recognize the existence of the other.

Then you can (upon boot) choose which OS you want to boot to without messing with the BIOS menus.

I have started using CachyOS on my new laptop, this laptop is not a gaming laptop. I just wanted an optimized OS for work and programming. Not sure if it's the best choice for beginners.

I have been using EndeavourOS on my desktop PC for like 3 years now. Great for gaming if you don't play some anticheat games. It's Arch basically with a live cd installer, simple to set up. Had no major issues with it, but I have an AMD gpu. Your experience might not be as smooth, because of your nvidia gpu. Big positive for this distro is the forum, it's one of the best linux forum community out there.

Just keep things simple(like using ext4) and don't forget to set up timeshift. I would also recommend turning secure boot off, if this custom win 11 works without it. If you can't, then some ubuntu or fedora based distro might be a better solution for you. Ubuntu and Fedora are usually better for beginners. I would recommend Fedora, if it has secure boot out of the box, not sure though. On other distros setting up secure boot is a manual process afaik. Secure boot isn't useful for linux and just creates issues.

There are countless articles and forum posts about dual booting, that shouldn't be an issue on any of these distros. But I stopped dual booting since I have installed EndeavourOS and only use windows in a virtual machine for a few work related stuff.