I knew about the Debian > Ubuntu ordering, but I take it Debian is still often used as a desktop environment, which is what I thought.

Oh, that’s very good to know. That’s a big limitation. That might make moving to Linux at all DOA for me. I’d likely need to do everything for work in a VM, but then what’s the point?

Unfortunately, I’m tied to Excel 2024. I make heavy use of new functions, like SORT that aren’t available in any other desktop app, and the web client doesn’t allow for VBA scripting, so it’s not suitable, either.

oh, shit:

The main one I see is if you need to install some proprietary VPN client it gets annoyingf

You’re right. I have a crappy work-supplied Windows laptop that has exactly that installed. It would be nice not to need to boot into that when I need to work on the server from home, but it’s not a deal breaker.

No other specific non-web-based software is needed for work, aside from the aforementioned OneDrive and Excel 2024.

Edit: Your last paragraph is exactly what I’m asking about; I’m capable of doing slightly involved tinkering, but it would need to be something that I can Google Fu through each step of someone walking through most of the steps. I don’t know it at all well enough to go completely “off script” and just tinker with confidence.

It sounds like you’re suggesting that going for something mainstream and getting it to work for games is likely a better option, particularly for someone with limited Limits experience?

Good to know! I use it at work for a server; ngl, my non-Bazzite distro search hasn’t been extensive, except getting to the point that I think I don’t want anything Ubuntu-based.

Thanks for the reply!

A few thoughts:

I was thinking Win 10 EOL won’t matter if the VM has no Internet access. Linux would sync the files for me, so the Windows VM can just run Excel (and maybe Word, since I’m setting up Office 2024 anyway) using the files synced by abraunegg’s onedrive, so it doesn’t need internet access. (Assuming there’s a partition format that works well for both Windows and Linux that I can use for onedrive, which I assume is a “solved” problem by now—i remember this being hard 20 years ago.)

And his package apparently works in Fedora 42 with docker, which I assume should work fine.

But yeah; maybe what you’re suggesting makes more sense. And that VM definitely would need web access, then, so Win 10 is a non-starter. The database work I do is likely easier in Linux, but that’s likely easy enough to get data files out of the VM for just that work, I would expect.

Another question now comes to mind; I’m going to look this up now; how hard is it to copy/paste between Linux and a VM? Edit: As I’d hoped, this is also apparently a solved problem and sounds easy to configure.

IIRC, that 70 US citizens deported by ICE statistic was from prior to Trump II. The current authoritarian secret police have definitely more than doubled that number in 3 months, I reckon.

I feel heartbroken for my Ameribros. We were so close, once. But I started boycotting you when you reelected Bush in 2004, pausing only briefly for a few years before the Tea Party took over in the Obama years. My passport expired over a decade ago and I haven’t needed to renew it.

I hope you all make it out of this okay! And that you don’t take us down with you.

Actually, no. Not according to the research. (Which I can’t find right now; just in a quick break.)

Essentially, somewhere (?) had the whole region take vacation at the same time, if possible. (Not essential services and obviously vacation businesses, lol). They found much greater benefits when there’s a large chunk of the population all off at the same time, and makes everyone happier (even those who have to still work).

They think the reasons are twofold:

1. We’re social creatures, and being able to connect with people meaningfully depends on them also being available at the same time.
2. When the region is on “vacation”, everyone gets more relaxed/chill, even those who are still working. Basically “vibes”. (They were a lot more technical in the study, lol).

Sorry I can’t link it, but something like “everyone who can be is off from July 15-August 15” would have big societal benefits.