Some additional esoterica...

Another trick I forgot to mention, because I've been using it for so long it's just standard practice: save Adobe Reader and browser-based PDF viewing for cases when you actually need javascript and forms. Which is seldom, really. There is a variety of simpler PDF readers that don't do the fancy stuff, but can still render text and basic images fine without executing random code that may be in the file. I like Sumatra PDF Reader when using Windows (slowly switching to Linux on my older computers in preparation for the end of Windows 10 support next year); it's lightweight, works well, is free for personal use (without a bunch of ads!), and handles epub files as well as pdf. A lot of word processors and image viewers can open PDF (check to be sure it won't run any included javascript), too.

VirtualBox is semi-free virtual machine software. Heavyweight, offered as partially open-source (free) by Oracle; but to realistically use it you have to get the "extensions" package as well as the basic software, and the extensions have a more restrictive (though still free for personal use) license. You need a spare license for an operating system to install in it if not using something open source like Linux. Another option, if you have old software lying around, is DOSBox (open source; I like the DOSBox-X fork), which emulates old PCs and provides a DOS command line, in Windows or Linux. DOSBox-X allegedly supports installing any DOS-based version of Windows (up to ME); I have a full copy of Windows 3.1 (runs Train Dispatcher 2!) running in it.

"Pro" versions of Windows come with a virtual machine built-in, (formerly?) known as Hyper-V, but you have to be a true geek (or have lots of experience in enterprise IT) to make it work other than as a base system security layer.

And before we get into (whatever) vs Apple wars, most things that run on Linux will also (with some tweaking) run on a Mac, or have an equivalent. For that matter, I'm pretty sure a basic PDF reader is included with Mac - Apple was into PDF as a standard before Windows. I don't use Apple, so no specific recommendations.