17 years is prehistory in IT years. Basing your comments on experiences from nearly 2 decades ago is just plain useless

I’ve used random Linux based video editors in the past, like 15-17 years ago. They were… Not great.

Would you mind rereading your first sentence?

Random? 17 years ago?

Well, the only piece of Apple tech I currently own is an iPad. I bought the thing through a pretty nice offer from my telco, and for a pretty specific use case, running the Affinity suite on the move without lugging my beefy laptop around.

When I saw how they went full idiot with their glass shit for the UI (hellooo, Windows Aero), I stopped allowing updates. The fact that to reduce transparency and effects to make the thing half usable you have to go into accessibility settings says it all.

I like somethings sloppy, but definitely not my OSes

Never thought of using winget. Ninite or chocolatey work well enough, but yeah, nice.

The thing is that if MS concentrated on providing a bulletproof experience, a sane licensing mode, with a low, cheap, entry bar, they would just keep being the top dog forever.

Now they are just giving market share to Linux and MacOS for free.

I do quite bit of windows installs. I usually use edge once, to either set up chocolate or use ninite, and download sane stuff. Then I hide edge as much as possible.

Riiiiight???

Here you go

Better yet, Windows IoT enterprise LTSC. Debloated Windows with LTSC

Us nerds don’t buy laptops?

I don’t either, but there are many in my family and friends I will gladly support.

Time to order a few SanDisk cards

I use Xpenology on an HP Gen 8 microswrver, a pretty nifty piece of kit. Works great, but setting up and upgrading versions can be a rather involved process.

Gamer desktops tend to be power hogs. Running them 24/7 can rack up some hefty power bills, plus noise, plus space, plus other tradeoffs.

Better a used thin client.

If you have a 3d printer, or access, o know someone willing to print for you, there are many free models out there

Definitely an option, but for the price of a Pi with all the extras, case, power supply, etc, you can get a used thin client that is way more capable.

There is a guy on YouTube that often reviews these things, and discovers some models that are surprisingly capable.

Synology publishes a list of certified non-synology drives, and warns you that drives outside the list are not recommended, but, at least in non enterprise models, allows them to be used. I believe there is some rather easy way (some config file change or the like) to circumvent the limitation, but yeah, dick move.

Bargaining chip. Hehe, I see what you did there.

Tesla sells itself as a technology innovation company, but it sells hype.