It just is a real alternative by now. Has been for a while. I have no idea why they say "getting closer".

If you want to just try it out, there nothing stopping you. Most distros allow you to just live-boot and use it without installing. It install into a 2nd boot SSD (a 30$ 128gig is fine), so you can dual boot.

I would not recommend the frequently recommended Mint though, as is somewhat outdated advice. It's good advice for people who just use a computer, but not really "power users". As a power user myself, who switched relatively recently, I am incredibly happy i went with CachyOS. While also targeted at gaming, it just works very well for any use case and being incredibly polished and honestly stable (despite being based on Arch, which is a rolling release). It's also very well setup to run Windows apps in general if the need arises. Wine and associated tools are there and available as optimized packages (with some selected patches).