TechAdmin

The 2X part means the DVD drive could read DVDs at up to 2X speed

Quick way to check if a program is using hardware video acceleration is with a gpu top utility.

Intel - intel_gpu_top

Nvidia - nvidia-smi / nvtop

AMD - radeontop / nvtop / amdgpu_top (just did quick search, don't have any AMD powered on to verify)

For steamdeck on the couch something like the xreal or rokid would be better. Some people have been able to make VR work with steamdeck with bad performance but they only tried VR games so don't know how it would be with regular games.

I bought a pair when they were still going by NReal name and they worked well with steam deck and my laptop. Battery life would last longer with only the glasses on. I didn't like always having to wear contacts so picked up a pair of Rokid's glasses too. Those have built in diopters and have been working well.

Self-host your own ACME server. Then you can use certbot pointed there.

These instructions are old so not sure if newer/better ways, https://blog.sean-wright.com/self-host-acme-server/

Is MariaDB on spinning disk or ssd?

I initially set up Nextcloud with MariaDB on spinning disk but it was slow even completely empty. I moved that container to ssd & performance was a lot better. The web UI may still have some slow loading parts but I can't say for sure since rarely use it. Caldav+carddav+Nextcloud client are how I usually interact with it.

They still build recommendations even if you're not logged in, you can see them in the sidebar after you load a video. Imo they only removed them from the homepage to try convincing people to log in or create account, it's all about increasing user numbers, ad engagement, and data collection these days.

Sounds like bridge mode is needed for the vm's network interface in virt.

I would say proxmox ve is easier to start with.

Does TrueNAS have a web UI that works well on mobile browsers for file download and upload? If it does then could probably use for simple scenarios.

The container method used should be whatever you are more familiar with or prefer. They both have their own quirks, pros, & cons.

SELinux - If you don't want to deal with SELinux then set it to permissive mode. If you want to keep in enforcing mode you need to create the appropriate policies, https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/using_selinux/configuring-selinux-for-applications-and-services-with-non-standard-configurations_using-selinux

Firewall - If you don't want it's protection then look up instructions to stop & disable it on your distro.

Port forwarding - From linux container side you either need to specify host networking or the ports you want to allow through, there is no avoiding that if it needs to be network accessible. If you want it internet accessible then you need to setup port forwarding on your router.

Have you looked into something like yunohost? It may be the kind of thing you're looking for.

I think there were some court cases in the US the HDD manufacturers won that allows them to keep using those stupid crap units to continue to mislead people. Been a minor annoyance for decades but since all the competition do it & no govt is willing to do anything everyone is stuck accepting it as is. I should start writing down the capacity in multiple units in review whenever buy storage devices going forward.

EndeavourOS on desktop and laptop side of things.

If router supports it, a static route via connected machine with IP forwarding enabled might work. OpenWrt has packages for things like tailscale and zerotier so could do it without an extra machine too.