“Google refused to provide specifics about how its control of search supports national security.”

trust me, bro.

As far as flavors of Linux, I would honestly recommend using VirtualBox while on Windows. You can download a preconfigured VM of just about any Linux distro or download whatever iso you want and install in a VM. This gives you some freedom to play around and break things (and you probably will at least once) and get more familiar with the different desktop environments, software installation, command line, searching for how to do things etc.