And straws. My plastic straw isn't the problem.

If your don't recycle your aluminum and other cans though, you're a bad person and you should feel bad about it.

Oh no! Another DE to choose from? How awful!

It sounds really counter intuitive, but wake up slower. It's really easy for me to startle awake just enough completely turn off my alarm, not just snooze, and fall back asleep hard. If I wake up to an alarm that slowly increases in volume from barely audible, then I tend to wake up much more gently and slower. That little bit of extra time means makes it much harder to fall back asleep and by the time I reach for my alarm to silence or even snooze it. I'm clear headed enough to not either actually snooze the alarm instead of turning it off or be awake enough to not fall back asleep at all. Going from awake straight to sitting up or standing is super stressful and just makes everything awful. Being mostly awake before my head even leaves the pillow is much less stressful.

How do you think they got these metrics? People aren't going down there to do science or tourism without being able to communicate back home. It is almost always just statistics from the identifying header information of web traffic. It's not at all uncommon for web traffic from Linux programs to not identify the operating system. I know in my experience identifying as Linux in a browser would be more likely to cause problems than offer any benefit.

Well there's your problem. Public wifi is going to have systems in place to stop exactly the kind of thing you're trying to do.

Yeah, it's super weird. I once named a file with mixed case, but one of the letters was the wrong case. Renaming the file didn't work at first. Renaming a file named PAscalCase.txt to PascalCase.txt resulted in no change to the filename. Windows continued to show it as PAscalCase.txt. I had to rename it to something totally different with different characters entirely, then rename it again to get it right.

Coffee is also a seed, not a bean.

I have setup and run what are basically HTPC's for decades now. Kodi running on a Debian based Linux distribution or just Debian is a solid recommendation and has lots of support for infrared remotes, but kodi can be very fiddly to setup properly. It will work, but don't expect it to work "out of the box". You'll probably still need a mouse and keyboard for anything outside Kodi. You'll have to read a bunch of documentation and do some customizing to get the most out of Kodi. It's still easier than most other setups, but it will feel very frustrating if it's your introduction to Linux too.

I've moved to using my HTPC primarily as a server. Once you get comfortable with linux and docker, setting up new server services like Jellyfish, Plex, and and *ARR stack is relatively trivial. The advantage here being that you can serve your media to any device that can connect to your server. For me that means one library of media to share with any TV in my house, any mobile device I own, and any friends and family computer savvy enough to download the right apps and setup an account. If your network (and your Internet connection) isn't reliable this kind of setup may not work very well for you at all. For example, Plex account authentication will fail is you don't have Internet. Jellyfin and Kodi fair better when Internet is only available occasionally or is unreliable.

My least favorite part of using Kodi was setting up the remote. Even worse was trying to configure controllers for retro gaming. The situation is MUCH better than it was, but is still far from easy. I was kind of able to side step the remote problem because now I can just use the remote for the TV (if it supports the Plex or Jellyfin apps) or another streaming stick like fire stick, Nvidia shield, or Roku. My Nvidia shield can pair with any Bluetooth controller and runs RetroArch so that problem was side stepped too. ROMs can be copied via samba shares or loaded directly by a USB drive.

TLDR: Kodi has built-in support for IR, but streaming sticks are cheap, and in the long run I found setting up a server was more versatile, more reliable, and less stressful. I know, I also hate it when people ask for a specific solution and others recommend asking a different question. But in this case, my experience is that IR remotes suck, are flaky, and not worth it if there is any other option.

Do you mind sharing what brand retail UPS weren't lasting a year?

I'm dealing with similar brownouts and also an area with lots of lightning. I got about 5 years out of my UPS batteries. Wondering if I've just been lucky.

Windows is never going to like an NTFS that has been touched by another OS even if it windows was completely shutdown during that time. Reading the NTFS partition might be okay. But, last I checked none of the Linux drivers could write without windows noticing and fouling things up. If that has changed it would be welcome news to me despite my warning use of windows.

If windows (and to a lesser extent that other OS) came bundled with some ability to mount, read, and write filesystems popular with other operating systems this wouldn't be such a problem. One shouldn't have to involve the network stack or 3rd party drivers just to share a partition on the same hardware or a portable drive with a modern file system.

Elephants (and mammoths probably) are also herbivores that chew their food. Sometimes that food is a whole tree. Using the polar bear sharp bone strategy would be like feeding a razor blade to a wood chipper.