Thank you for your reply. I’m using “test net” and “test vault” interchangeably - apologies - an email sent a couple of days ago led me to this thread and I just wanted to get up to date and to see how I can contribute now.
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Welcome to the free world of Linux! Once you get used to it, you will be surprised at how much easier it is to handle than Windows. However, you may find Linux Mint (https://linuxmint.com) more polished than pure Debian which Mint is based on too.
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Whats the odds of a new vault from home test network this week or next?
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I expect the dev team to neither confirm nor deny the possibility of that happening.
OTOH I have bought 3 Pi-type devices in the last week though AND cleaned up a few old 2.5" HDDs from old laptops 
#JustSayin
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Thank you for the suggestion of Mint. I have seen Mint before and it looks great, but I wanted to go to Debian because of the philosophy of a fully FOSS system. Others say Fedora is very similar(?) I figured that because privacy and freedom matter to me, that Debian was the closest to these ideals because of the lack of proprietary software…
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As far as I understand the main (package) repository of Mint is also FOSS. If I’m not mistaken, you have to explicit activate/chose the non FOSS repositories you want to use.
Mint is part of Debian OS family (.deb packages). Fedora of the Red Hat OS family (.rpm packages). So not similar in that sense.
But you could say that they are similar because they are both the ‘source’ (community-based) OS for the rest of their OS ‘family’:
Debian → Ubuntu → Mint
Fedora → Red Hat Enterprise → Centos
Ps: still interesting new initiatives like below, but that is bleeding edge.
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@draw Thank you for your thoughts and explaining things in more detail.
Because I’m starting with Virtualbox to feel comfortable and to get a feel for things (before dual-booting with Windows) I’ll make a Mint Virtualbox too, and play around with both distros.
There are a couple of questions I have for anyone who might like to answer, so although not on topic here, (and apologies for posting here) I’d certainly welcome a private message with any answers:
a) Apparently dual-booting is easier than ever now? Best to have Windows first and put Linux on second, and the boot loader takes care of itself etc?
b) I really don’t know what do do about file system. Right now my drives are NTFS. Is there a file system I can use for all of my data that can be written and read easily by both Windows and Linux?
These questions have been bugging me for a while! Again, apologies for going off-topic!
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It was easy to dual boot, then Windows added a secure boot process, so I’m not totally sure on the status of that these days. I think you might have to disable the secure boot in the BIOS? Someone else who had tried it more recently that me can comment
NTFS looks to be a good choice for partitions shared between Linux and Windows.
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Recommend Mint too…
One of the biggest differences might be that you have a home drive separate from the system. That makes upgrade and install of alt OS easier but is new for many with Windows. If you can now see one partition or drive with your files then mounting could be done from Windows and Linux whichever you use at the time… helps transition.
Also, make backups! Always make backups!!
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Concerning dual booting: similar experience here as @drehb: long time ago that I did that myself, but I guess it probably isn’t that difficult nowadays. From what I remember: indeed first installing Windows is/was easier. Reason why it is a long time ago for me is increased security rules on work laptop (dual boot with also Linux not possible there anymore) and better virtual solutions like VirtualBox. Now you can also use WSL or WSL2 on a recent Windows 10 patch. But that not that interesting if you want a full graphical Linux distro, instead of headless (=only commandline).
b) Concerning file partitions: see table in following article:What File System Should I Use for My USB Drive? → fat32, exfat or NTFS(no NTFS if Mac is also necessary).