1. just pick any of the common recommendations. Mint. Ubuntu, Kubuntu… Just search for “which linux distro is right for me” and look at a few answers and pick one. Most of them work the same way.

2. you probably can’t use autocad or adobe products. kernel level anticheat is a problem, so games that need that are out.

3. Yes. …ish.

There are basically three levels, one where you only click everything and it’s basically an app / wizard as you know them.

The next level would be that it’s possible that you have manually edit a few text or config files to make things work the way you want to, or the best solution to your problem can be a command line thing. That’s very mostly “not programming”, the command line and manually editing config files can look scary, but most of the time it’s completely harmless. This happens, but it’s rare and it’s mostly simple stuff. The bigger and more used the distro is that you pick, the less you will run into this.

And then the third level would be “real programming” and basically nobody does that and nobody expects that.

4. yes, you can dual boot.

5. Just do it. If you’ve “built” a pc before, it’s the same deal. If you read the manual a tiny bit, it’s like lego. It looks way scarier than it is. And if you look up solutions it is extremely likely that you will find a well researched answer that does solve your problem.