I am a Linux beginner so i could be wrong, but I believe Linux is very plug and play and has drivers already integrated. At least I don’t remember downloading any when I set it up. I am personally using Linux Mint Cinnamon with a GTX 1060. In Mint there is a Driver Manager preinstalled which let’s you pick a few nvidia drivers and an open source alternative, so it’s very beginner friendly :)

do I have to use the onboard graphics till i get everything installed?

To that I can confidentially say no: because I have no onboard graphics and always had video output ^^

I switched from Win10 to Mint, and am quite happy. You can get a lot of stuff done through GUI, so you can put off learning how to use the terminal a little. If you are worried about using it, I can recommend using ChatGPT. Helped me troubleshoot a lot of issues and learning a few tricks.