Seems like SecuROM won’t install from playing singleplayer:
https://www.gog.com/forum/fear_series/gogs_blatant_lies_regarding_securom_in_fear/page4

Nevermind, it’s been abandoned by the company that contributed the most to it.
https://lwn.net/Articles/882460/

I haven’t tried it myself but there is libreoffice online
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/
https://hub.docker.com/r/libreoffice/online/

Their site works fine without allowing javascript, that way it turns into quite a simple thing too!

Obsidian Entertainment has gone from Fallout: New Vegas where you were free to kill anyone, even at the cost of disrupting main quests, to Outer Worlds where most of that freedom is still intact to Avowed where the freedom to do evil choices is either taken from you (npcs not reacting to being shot in the face) or having no impact (npcs ignoring your stealing of money and food in the tavern).

I agree with your thought that it’s a directorial choice, not attention to detail, but it’s one that goes in the complete opposite direction of what the studio is known for.

1. Does the distro I pick matter?
   Packages
   When you install a distro it will have repositories of apps that you can easily install and easily keep updated using either the GUI (GNOME Software for GNOME, Discover for KDE) or the package manager in terminal (dnf in Fedora, apt in kubuntu and mint). It’s similar to how you install apps on a smartphone.
   The good thing about the apps from the default repository is that they’re (in theory) tested to work well with the distro.
   You can also install applications from other sources when necessary.
   Update Frequency and new tech
   Another difference is how new kernel and software you get from the repos.
   The latest Debian Stable runs kernel 6.1 while Fedora just updated to 6.12 and arch has been running 6.12 since december.
   If you’re running the newest hardware then the chance of having drivers available automatically increases with a newer kernel.

2. Company-run distros and alternatives:
   In my opinion Ubuntu is the ones doing the most forcing as of now, and even they are angels compared to Microsoft.
   Fedora had discussions about including opt-out Telemetry to aid them getting data to improve the distro. They listened to community feedback and backpedaled that into opt-in metrics:
   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Telemetry
   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Metrics
   Debian and Arch are both examples of distros without enterprise involvement and that have no upstream distro that can affect their releases.
   Map of distros here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

3. Stability of the distro:
   Of your frontrunners I’ve only run Fedora but that has been stable and been working well for me for my primary PC. So has Debian which I run on my servers (I have a Debian VM running Portainer for dockers, one for running Jellyfin and a third for Forgejo).

4. Monitor support
   Multi monitor support
   I don’t have the desktop space for double monitors personally, but I’ve heard that KDE 6 (Plasma) handles multi monitor support well.
   HDR
   Should be working since November

• https://9to5linux.com/kde-plasma-6-2-4-re-enables-hdr-mode-for-users-on-nvidia-565-and-linux-6-11

5. Both KDE and GNOME are customizable. KDE is more similar to Windows and I realized that most of my GNOME customizations was to make it more similar to Windows and KDE. I’ve since switched to KDE and must say I really enjoy having a proper file browser as default. Nautilus (default GNOME file browser) has been simplified to death and caused me to create a script to replace it with nemo.

Nvidia is a whole lot simpler to use than people make it sound like, though I’ll stay team red:
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA#Current_GeForce.2FQuadro.2FTesla
Fedora guide for Nvidia drivers unless you’re running a really old card:

sudo dnf update -y # Update your machine and reboot
sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia # Installs the driver
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda #optional for cuda/nvdec/nvenc support (required for Davinci Resolve)  

• Gaming including emulation
  First person shooters with kernel intrusive Anticheat won’t work in Linux as they expect to spy on a Windows OS.
  Other than that gaming on Linux is really getting there as I’m sure you’ve realized when using a Steamdeck.
  Outside of Steam you have Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris and Bottles for running windows games on Linux.
  I’m mostly using Lutris but I think Heroic Games launcher is the more popular one.
• Firefox
  Default browser in most distros
• VLC
  Available in most default distro repositories.
• Spotify
  Available as a Flatpak on Flathub, haven’t used it myself.
• Discord
  I know people has had some trouble with screen sharing but that the DiscordCanary (think Beta version) solves it.
  https://github.com/flathub/com.discordapp.Discord/issues/380
• Godot
  Can be downloaded as a simple bin file from their own site: https://godotengine.org/download/linux/
  Also available as a Flatpak on Flathub
• Visual Studio
  The closest you get is VSCode.
• Git
  Not a problem.
• Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
  Photoshop might be trouble, Audacity and Davinci Resolve should work.
• Misc “Tinkering” (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
  Handbrake is available as a Flatpak on Flathub, there’s dvd burner applications available too.

Regarding HoudiniFX it seems they have Linux installs, and a free (with watermark) version for hobbyists - https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini-apprentice/
Other than that I’d say Blender is the goto app, showing up as one of the most popular apps in the Discover app.

My recommendation would be to use clonezilla or a similar tool to make an image of your windows install and save that on the external ssd.
Then I would install Fedora KDE or whatever’s your poison on the internal drive.
If you wanna switch back to windows then you can always use clonezilla, or your tool of choice, to restore the image.
You could also use KVM/Qemu in your linux distro to restore the image into a windows vm.
virt-manager gives you a desktop gui while cockpit + cockpit-machines gives you a nice webui for handling virtual machines in linux.

Clonezilla guide, for both linux and windows
https://www.linuxbabe.com/backup/how-to-use-clonezilla-live

Both Cockpit and Virt-Manager are available in Fedora KDE’s Discover app if you prefer GUI installs:
Cockpit

Virt-Manager

Reason I went or self-hosting Forgejo is to know it when federation comes along for real.
I’d love being able to federate my self-hosted Forgejo with my friends self-hosted Forgejo servers.
https://forgejo.org/2025-01-monthly-update/#federation

Linux Routing Fundamentals

Linux has been a first class networking citizen for quite a long time now. Every system running a Linux kernel out of the box has at least three routing tables and is supporting multiple mechanisms for advanced routing features from policy based routing (PBR), to VRFs(-lite), and network namespaces (NetNS). Each of these provide different levels or separation and features, with PBR being the oldest one and VRFs the most recent addition (starting with kernel 4.3).

This article is the first part of the Linux Routing series and will provide an overview of the basics and plumbings of Linux routing tables, what happens when an IP packet is sent from or through a Linux box, and how to figure out why. It’s the baseline for future articles on PBR, VRFs, and NetNSes, their differences as well and applications.

SnappyMail seem to be a fork of Rainloop and both Rainloop and Snappymail appear to allow multiple providers - https://snappymail.eu/
Cypht seems to be a similar solution where you selfhost a webserver that acts as a web client to external email providers - https://www.cypht.org/documentation/
I find nothing about push notifications for either of those solutions though, and I’m not sure about how much the webclients cache.

Now that we’re adding more dystopian books to the thread I’d like to shout out to Kallocain (1940) by Karin Boye. It’s more of a totalitarian state similar to 1984 but has an aspect of truth drugs, a hot topic back then, and thought criminalization.

Uconsole bigger one - https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-devterm

Beepberry - https://beepy.sqfmi.com/
https://liliputing.com/beepberry-is-a-79-hackable-pocket-computer-kit-with-a-blackberry-keyboard/

Colorberry - https://www.elecrow.com/colorberry.html
https://github.com/hyphenlee/colorberry

PC Pilet old but cool looking one - https://soulscircuit.com/pilet
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/pilet-mini-pi-5-modular-computer/

ESP32 - ESP32 is a SoC, example of handheld using it is the LILYGO T-Deck Plus - https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-plus-1
https://linuxgizmos.com/updated-t-deck-plus-an-esp32-handheld-device-with-gps-and-lora-support/

Mecha Comet with the switchable keyboards - https://mecha.so/comet
https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/modular-linux-handheld-mecha-comet/

Some links to help checking out the handhelds mentioned.

Some developers make gog users second rate citizens, some don’t publish on gog at all. I wouldn’t call it a sinking ship though, later years they’ve had more big name games such as Baldur’s Gate 3 than before.

Also, if gog shuts down tomorrow I can still install all my games from the installers on my network share, something I can’t say about steam.

I am very happy about Proton/SteamOS and how they assist in making games playable on Linux. I hope the SteamOS devices become popular enough that developers stop trying to shut Linux out.

I’m not looking forward to what will happen with Steam when Gabe is no longer around though.
Having one big marketplace/launcher might be comfy right now but that can turn into a nightmare quickly when there’s a new owner in town.

Personally I’m trying to buy any game I can on gog.com instead of Steam. Both to get my own offline installers and to ensure not all my eggs (games) are in one basket. I launch more games from Lutris then Steam today.

I would go for registering my own domain and then rent a small vps and run debian 12 server with bind9 for dns + dyndns.
If you don’t want to put the whole domain on your own name servers then you can always delegate a subdomain to the debian 12 server and run your main domain on your domain registrators name servers.

edit:

https://github.com/qdm12/ddns-updater

If your registrar is supported the ddns-updater sounds a lot easier.

Agreed - my use-case would be “24/7 server + gaming vm on demand with my monitor and peripherals connected to the gaming vm” and I doubt that is what most are going for.

The reason I mentioned my own build is because I consider putting all the components together to be a step up in complexity too, when compared to going pre-built. For someone who is comfortable with building their own PC I would definitely recommend doing that, the ability to tailor the hw to your needs is so much greater. :)

It has more functionality
https://obsproject.com/kb/obs-studio-overview

Hairpin NAT/NAT Reflection can make the experience of visiting the WAN IP from the LAN a different one then if you do it from somewhere else. Or what is your what?

As long as you make yourself some aliases for your common ffmpeg commands including flags I’m sure it’s gonna work out fine. Using something like OBS is gonna make it a lot easier of course.