I'm gonna work on from the kernel on my actual machine? or should I just fire a distro on quemo and start?

I am not a driver dev but I have worked on some kernel stuff before. When I very first started on this I just a spare computer that I used. I would keep a reliable kernel loaded on the machine but would compile and add the kernel I was working. I set my GRUB timer to be like 30 seconds so that I could select the kernel I was working on at that time.