I don't know when the last time you tried to install Windows was, but when I installed Windows 11 Pro yesterday, there was no obvious option to install without an internet connection and a Microsoft account. To make that option appear, I had to hit shift+f10 at the country selection screen to open a command prompt and run the script located at "oobe\bypassrno.cmd" to have the option "I don't have an internet connection" to pop up and allow me to bypass needing a Microsoft account.

I had similar issues. My Nvidia GPU was the main thing hold me back for so long. I finally upgraded to an AMD RX 7900 XTX and cycled my Nvidia GPU to my home server for transcoding, gpu compute, and KasmVNC GPU acceleration.

I also decided that ray tracing, HDR, and games that don't support Linux just aren't important to me, but it took me a long time to become okay with that.

For development, I guess I've been lucky in the type of work that I do in that Linux is a perfect fit. I find Windows to be far more of a hassle than it's worth, but if you do game development or Windows-specific development, I can see that being a barrier.

When I said "got rid of," I mostly meant "gave to friends and family."

I recently installed NixOS on my partner's 2013 macbook air to give it a new lease on life, too.

I just got rid of my last Windows installation, and I got rid of all my Apple devices a couple years ago. The Linux life is so nice!

On the other hand, I just setup a Windows gaming machine for a friend (I would have pushed Linux, but I live far away and can't commit to being tech support). There were so many hoops to jump through to cut through all the crap:

• I had to set the region to somewhere in the EU so that my friend can uninstall Edge sometime in March, 2024 without breaking other functionality
• I had to run a hidden script at a specific point during the install to allow me to not have to use a Microsoft account
• I had to disconnect the non-boot drive and reinstall because the Windows installer uses motherboard drive ordering instead of UUID to decide which drive to put the boot partition on.
• I had to run Win Debloat Tools to get rid of all the crap Microsoft adds to their OS
• I had to find a 3rd party driver update tool because the motherboard manufacturer's software is terrible and installs a bunch of extra crap.
• I had to install a 3rd party Nvidia driver update tool because their official one requires making an account and gives a bunch of unwanted ads as notifications.

It's seriously bonkers. It makes you really appreciate Linux as a whole and package managers in particular.

I do scientific computing and I've used Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch, and NixOS for work.

Any and all of these can do what you need. Hell, you could probably throw your whole development environment into a docker container and use it anywhere. Pick one and go with it.

That said, here are my preferences:

Right now, I really like NixOS and Nix for development environments, but it's a lot to learn, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you were really excited to try it.

Before NixOS, I used Arch on my laptop, and it was soooo nice to be able to build my own desktop environment just the way I wanted it from the ground up, which is possible on any distribution, but the Arch documentation makes this much more approachable. If you are happy with KDE Plasma or Gnome, and you're using well-supported hardware, then I wouldn't say Arch is really worth the time (unless you're excited to play with it).

Fedora and Nobara (a Fedora-based distribution with a lot of gaming-focused presets) have been a breath of fresh air coming off the heels of painstakingly setting up Arch and then NixOS. Fedora is pretty nice out of the box and Nobara has been the best experience of going from zero to gaming even when compared to Windows.

Debian (especially Debian 12) has been fantastic for servers and for machines that don't need to use the newest hardware. It's still my go-to for lots of things.

Ubuntu is fine, but Canonical, the company that makes it, has made some unfortunate choices lately, and with Debian 12 being as good as it is, I don't think I'll ever have a reason to go back.

Side note: One thing to look out for in the near future is System76's COSMIC desktop environment, which seems to be doing a lot of things right. There is already active development to get it working on NixOS, and I'm sure it will be available on Pop!OS from the start. I would also bet that it would be ready to go on Arch not long after. It will likely eventually be easy to install on all distributions, but if you want to try that out as soon as it's ready, one of those three would be a good option.

I put it all under a spoiler tag because it's a lot. Let me know if you're interested!

If you live near Washington, DC, I've got a good system ready to go that I'm selling.

Make your own brackets with construction lumber or plywood?

The 45Drives homelab case is 17.125" deep

https://store.wikimedia.org/

Do you have separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSIDs? If not, you should try that. 80mbps to 5mbps through 4 sheets of drywall is a pretty steep drop for 2.4GHz, and 80mbps is a pretty low throughput for 5GHz AC1300, which your APs support. Are both APs wired? Try disconnecting one and doing speed/signal strength testing in all rooms, then do the same with the other AP in its location. If there is a huge difference, try switching the AP locations. Also, it may be worth checking whether the APs are negotiating a gigabit wired connection to your switch/router.

Which 2 APs? Have you mapped signal strength across rooms? How many clients? How many other wireless networks sharing a channel with you? 2.4GHz or 5GHz? What are your walls made of?

How big is your home? Do you really need multiple APs?