Ulrich

The installation is not the problem...

I understand completely and I'm not arguing with you.

They wouldn't save it from being thrown away if people like you weren't buying them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say its bad, just that buying from consumer-friendly companies as new is still better, in my opinion.

Buying used is not as bad but still supports the resale value of consumer-hostile devices, which indirectly supports their new value.

They have their shortcomings but it's all worth it to have pro-sumer hardware, in my opinion. I just can't bear to give my money to consumer-hostile companies anymore.

Once again, that's fine so long as you don't need the things that don't work.

one drive kept trying to sync my files when the PC was idle. (One drive was disabled!!!!)

Welcome to Windows. Basically the entire operating system is malware at this point.

Mine says 99% Steam Deck and 1% Linux, which is weird considering they're the same thing.

But probably 50% was on my desktop, which also shows up as Steam Deck under Bazzite.

That depends entirely on what you're trying to do.

Any advice/links for a beginner

you can start installing Proxmox

🤔

I would not look at his guide. If you've watched any of Louis' videos, you already know this guy is a ranting machine. He can go on and on for hours about things. I watched about 15 minutes of his rambling and realized he had gotten basically nowhere. It's also one of the more complex ways of doing things. Use ZimaOS to get started with the easy button.

Stick with whatever router you have, for starters. You can upgrade later. You don't necessarily need that at all.

For the actual server I highly recommend this guy. N100 is very common due to being very inexpensive and efficient. You'll have to add RAM and an SSDs but you probably want to choose exactly how large that is anyway. It has 4xNVMe and 2xSATA, if you decide you want to expand later.

Let me give you 2 big reasons:

1. Linux does not work with the particular hardware or software you want or need to use.
2. It's a PITA to just do basic stuff.