It's been a while since I've checked in. Suspect you have your answer after this long. Boot manager/grub is pretty much installed with many/most distros. Just need to be sure to select the correct installation options during installation (to install next to Windows, and not replace it), but it will be set up automatically in general. I generally create or resize a partition while in Windows before installing, and just have it installed in the new blank partition. You can do it from Linux, I just usually do it that way.

I've used many in the past 20 years. Most recently, Kubuntu/Ubuntu/Opensuse/Fedora/Mint. Fedora is my current daily.

Mint is "easy" and stable. Cinnamon edition is what I suggest. Conservative updates, good forums.