A friend of mine mentioned that a much more efficient way to distro hop is to do it in a VM rather than boot an ISO every time. I’ve only ever used WINE and am unsure how to go about doing this.

What’s the best way to try distro hopping and what are some easy-ish distros to try out temporarily?

I’ve been using Linux Mint Debian edition for a while now and am happy with it on my main machine, but want to try out some others on my spare just to make sure there’s not another one that I like more.