use one as a base and experiment in virtual machines, makes it much easier to FAFO and then you can always reinstall everything once you commit to one distro (in the end you're mostly selecting for package manager and desktop env, even tho you can easily switch the desktop env on distros)
Discussion
The only issue I have with that is, in my ignorance, wouldn't running VMs not be a fair comparison to a bare metal install?
VMs usually the graphics sucks. this can be worked around but usually entails modifying BIOS settings and fiddly configuration in the VM app. it is even possible to partition off the video card to dedicate it to a VM, but it was difficult to get it to play nice. with that tool i was able to get Windows to use the GPU dedicated.
reminds me, this might be a good way for me to get around the problem of AMD ROCm GPU compute setup. with the ... i forget the name of the thing for partitioning PCI-express devices, enabled, you can then use the dedicated GPU for a windows or other OS installation even have it run on a separate screen. that was another hassle with it, multi monitor setups can be a real pain for this kind of case. unless you get a hardware switcher for the displays.
i guess the first question should be - whats the purpose of exploring multiple distros?
To find something easy (enough) to use, fast, reliable, and cool.
is it your first time using linux for primary desktop?
HEck no. Been on Linux nearly exclusively for most of a decade at this point. I am just not into code/dev. I can use a terminal and cut and paste with the best of them.