1. Alpine is still a Linux distro, just a lighter one. Also, busybox is a set of standard utilities as an alternative to coreutils; I have no idea how it’s particularly relevant here.
2. The thing is, I’m not using only Docker. I also use native nginx as a reverse proxy, for which I like Debian’s defaults, as well as SyncThing, which are both well-maintained packages in Debian. Also I kind of prefer glibc distros. While glibc kind of sucks, so much stuff I like using prefers or requires it; for instance, last I saw, mDNS/Avahi resolution on BusyBox was kind of a pain in the rear.
3. Most of what I use Flatpak for isn’t network-facing or opening unverified files anyway; the most important applications I do run the native Debian version. Honestly, truth be told, you are correct that I do often prefer native versions and will run the native Debian package if possible (and considering the current age of stable, a lot of them really aren’t that old; Inkscape is basically still the latest version, for instance, while Firefox is always kept to the latest ESR); at some point, though, I do find a Debian package that is too behind to do what I do (though rare, TBH), and despite some issues with Flatpak, at the end of the day, I need to just get a piece of software installed and get on with my day. In that case, I just do a Benjamin Sisko:

Honestly, in the age of Flatpak and containerization (as well as Debian often being well-supported by upstream projects for script or package-based install), I feel like the age of Debian packages isn’t that annoying anymore; anything important gets security patches, and it’s easier than ever to use 3rd party software without breaking your system. I will add that Debian seems to be much better these days at making sure either a reasonably up-to-date version ships with a release (and can be kept secure during a stable cycle) or not shipping it at all as to allow the user to install it themselves.

I remember back in just 2021 when it took months after Firefox ESR 78 went EOL for them to update Bullseye to 91; recently, it only took them a few days after 140’s EOL to switch to 153 (and 91-115 and 115-140 happened without much note either), which isn’t perfect, but much better than it was.

If you need to install it on a new laptop, backports often has you covered. I ran a backports kernel for about a year on Debian Bookworm to get my laptop’s Wi-Fi modem working; I was able to quit using the backports kernel once Trixie came out.

No, not until 2027. I don’t really know why this meme was posted at this exact moment.

Eh. They’re actually pretty on top of security patches for pretty much any internet-exposed server software.

The OpenSSL incident was a long time ago at this point.

Uploading a gz source archive to a Git repository is absolutely cursed. Still, looks like a cool project.

I’ll also add that if you do enable SSH and are stupid enough to expose port 22, then at least make sure you have key-based authentication instead of password authentication and keep your keys safe.

I could never get Gnome Network Displays to work, but it’s worth a shot.

Looks like that site is dead and has being an AI slop domain squat.

I think KDEnlive is good as well, definitely the least terrible FOSS one. I never used Premiere Pro on that advanced a level, but for basic effects, keyframes, and title cards, it does quite well.

The main proprietary, “professional” one on Linux is Da Vinci Resolve, but I’ve never used it on Linux, since KDEnlive is just fine for me.

Honestly, in my opinion, every video editor is terrible to some extent; it’s having to deal with enormous amounts of data every second more than almost any other program on a computer, and even a semi-usable editor is a mind-bogglingly impressive feat.

Of course I don’t mean those art-stealing cannibals over at Adobe allowing them, I mean the Wine software allowing them, as it semantically implied.

Like I said, I wouldn’t touch Adobe with a 39.5 foot pole, but Photoshop is unfortunately necessary in those relatives’ industry, so getting on a high horse and telling them to use GIMP or Krita is not going to accomplish anything.

I’ve gotten used to GIMP and used it for a lot of cool thing (especially G’MIC for getting CD liner note scans looking quite good), but it’s just not a solution for serious professional use.

Not necessarily. It’s often less Calc’s capability that is at issue, and moreso its compatibility with imported sheets. Calc tends to have every feature I need when I make a spreadsheet.

I think the main issue I’ve seen is when people need bug-for-bug (or nearly so) compatibility with VB macros.

I personally never want to touch anything Adobe ever again, but for my father’s and grandfather’s use cases, they still need it, so if it ends up working well, maybe it’ll finally allow them to use Linux.

I believe 3.0 finally moved to Python 3. Resynthesizer was also totally rewritten for 3.0, but I don’t think it’s in Python anymore (?).

Post system specs here just to be safe. If it’s an older machine, there could be various hardware failures. “Monitors” makes it sound like a desktop, but you should clarify just to be safe, and perhaps indicate if has PCIe slots or is more of a mini PC.

Also, what do you mean by “monitors going dark”? Are the backlights on, or are they absolutely dark?

It’s probably not Secure Boot. I mean, worth a test, but it sounds like the issue occurs in the middle of a running session, which is not consistent with the issues sometimes presented by Secure Boot.

I usually use my device’s native boot menu these days; booting through GRUB usually triggers the Bitlocker screen.

Sounds like a freak accident rather than the fault of the VM.

I literally use a GPU for passthrough on my Windows 10 (and macOS) VM; PCIe is a much more complex protocol and much easier to F up than USB.

I’ve used my iPhone many times through Windows and been fine, as well as whole USB keyboards and mice (just simple ones); I think I might have even updated an iOS device once, though I can’t remember if I actually did. I’ve also used an iPod Nano 7th through an 11 LTSC VM before.

I could see some things being a little finicky, but simply managing a Zune with a VM probably causes no issues. It’s probably been eons since it got a firmware upgrade anyway.

That’s just a VM running atop Docker container; convenient, perhaps, but a little misleading to users who don’t understand how Docker works and might think it’s better performance-wise than a VM.

Dual boot isn’t that bad if you just use separate drives; the issue is only with Windows and Linux on one drive.

It’s not possible on all devices, but my laptop has dual NVMe slots, and I used to boot Linux off an SATA SSD and Windows off an NVMe on my desktop before getting rid of Windows and moving my Linux install to the NVMe drive. Never had a problem.

The only hiccup you’ll probably run into is exorbitant storage prices, although you can probably opt for less storage (256GB or 512GB), you can still get well below $100 and have it be perfectly fine.