

If you are running a non home version of Windows you could install the Hyper-V services on your computer and start with VMs that way.
Another option is VMware Workstation/Fusion now that it is free again, or Virtual Box by Oracle.
That is what I did for a while. A Debian VM with 2 CPUs MD 8Gb of ram to start playing around with Docker before getting a Pi.
You don’t mention where you are from so apart from eBay there isn’t really much else to go with.





You don’t need to use a dedicated card for networking, assuming you have a PC from the last decade the hardware is smart enough to share the NIC.
I bridge my ethernet NIC between Windows and my Hyper-V VMs and everything talks just fine.