O&O Shutup for Windows is also a solid tool for disabling telemetry and bloat. They have a recommended set of options to flip, all of which can be flipped at once, which is real damn convenient.

Yeah, I’m with you there. Don’t pirate an OS. That is just asking for shit to go wrong.

Always, always, always get OS images from the first party or first-party identified mirror.

Linux asnt an option for … Davinci Resolve

Davinci Resolve has a Linux download button on their website. So it should be ok. Admittedly I haven’t used that specific program on Linux, so I can’t say for sure it’s ok or not.

leap into the realm of Apple silicon with an M4 Pro Mac Mini

Yeah, Apple did a real good job with their processors in the last few years. Intel was holding them back hard. It’s amazing how much better the new systems are compared to just a few years ago.

This whole Win 11 mess is what finally convinced me to switch. I still can’t get over that Settings hasn’t reached feature parity with Control Panel yet. Figured if I have to re-learn how to do settings for the 10th time, I might as well do it in an OS that isn’t shoving ads in my face.

Why would Pennsylvanians hate carbon-free power?

You would rather power it with natural gas? Because that is what would largely power it otherwise. The datacenter does not turn off at night.

Trees are carbon neutral. They pull the carbon out and sequester it in themselves. When they rot or burn, the carbon is returned.

It’s Not Hard For A Billion-Dollar Company To Credit An Artist From Time To Time

The companies who own these games never bother to credit the artist

I guess I’m a bit confused here. Every film I have seen in my entire life credits the artists, and many games do as well.

Some games that make for some fun coop and don’t require a ton of screen time. All of these are at least gold rated on ProtonDB so should be fine on the SteamDeck, though I’m not sure about crossplay with consoles on any:

• Sanctum - An interesting combo of first person shooter and tower defense (Sanctum 2 was also real good)
• Borderlands 1 - Looter shooter with some solid humor (Borderlands 2 was also real good, but goes downhill in later games)
• MechWarrior 5 - Who doesn’t want to be a giant mech riddled with guns?
• Left 4 Dead 2 - Fight together to escape zombies, or in multiplayer servers work together as the zombies to take out other humans

Now, less of a focus on shooters:

• Golf It and Golf With Your Friends - Put Put golf taken to extreme levels
• Magica 2 - Murder enemies together in a top-down wizard game
• BattleBlock Theater - Jump over obstacles and solve puzzles together

Yeah, your suggestion is the only thing I could think that would even work, but honestly, it’s probably more trouble than it is worth.

An alternative which doesn’t quite meet the requirements, but will be much lower effort would be to format the drive(s) as exFat, which both Windows and Linux can read without issue. Then put them up as a network share in both OSes.

If you are wanting RAID 1 with those two drives…this won’t work unless you are either using hardware raid (maybe you can set it in your bios?) or if you can find a software raid that both windows and linux use. For RAID, maybe just pick one OS and that will be the one that has the share.

I would also recommend against the SSD caching idea with all this other stuff in the mix, wait till you have a dedicated NAS PC. You are going to pull your hair out otherwise.

OP, do you have an old computer, even an old laptop? A NAS doesn’t require much computing power. You can plug your drives in via a SATA to USB adapter. Then you will have a dedicated NAS box and all these problems get 500x easier.

Personally, I use TVs as a simple screen and watch everything through other devices (Roku, or a Linux PC running MythTV).

This would be my suggestion. Get a mini pc or dongle and use the TV simply as a display. Internet connected TVs are never well supported.

Also, highly suggest disconnecting the TV from the internet. They don’t get security updates and they are notorious for spying on people’s viewing habits.

Is this odd? Most cars have had several recalls, and if you have never taken your car in for recall work, you need to go look up what work was (not) done on your VIN and take care of it. Lots of cars are still out there with claymores for airbags, make sure your car isn’t among them.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls

This solves only the most recent of privacy concerns that were only discovered with it recently. The primary concern is the core ‘feature’ itself: Windows recording everything you do and look at.

People work with your personal data on a regular basis, you better hope not a single one of them have this ‘feature’ enabled.

Pentium D processors are pretty power hungry, so factor that into your thoughts. Also make sure you put a modern OS on it that is getting security updates. It probably has Win XP or Vista installed which isn’t safe to connect to any network.

It should work fine as a router as long as you don’t enable any of the packet inspection features. For basic routing and firewalling for a home network it should be plenty powerful. I would personally put a small SATA SSD in it as the main drive and ditch the 90GB HDD.

As an additional idea, if you put a larger SATA drive or two into it you could make it a NAS.

Do a web search for recruiting firms. Find one who specifically mentions they recruit for your industry.

Alternative: Submit resumes directly to companies you are interested in and/or use a recruiter. The latter is surprisingly nice. Last time I used one I got lined up for phone interviews with little effort and the recruiter pushed the company forward during the hiring pipeline when the company was being wishy-washy.

The recruiter only gets full payment if you get hired and stay at your job for a full year. (And this payment does not come from you!)

Linux Mint is real nice from the ‘it just works’ perspective. Common things like you mention are preinstalled and the default (cinnamon) UI feels very familiar coming from Windows.

Ah intel, never change!

Yeah, that is a big deal for privacy reasons. There is no reason one needs to send such information to companies.

This is a product you pay for and it doesn’t respect your choices…