Honestly this guy’s whole channel is excellent, highly recommended

Not mine but my partner’s machine (which I build and largely maintain for her) is a custom Debian install on ZFS root using ZFS boot menu and running a custom minimal i3 desktop environment.

Another option is to avoid the installer entirely and install from a live environment using chroot and whatever your distro’s installation bootstrap tool is. I started using this method to install Debian on ZFS root using this method for a while and it’s become my go-to method for installing most distros as it gives you the most control over the resulting OS. It will also often take some distro-specific knowledge but is also a valuable learning opportunity.

I think they may have dropped the feature but I distinctly remember being disappointed in the feature that it wouldn’t download MP3s to your server so I’m pretty sure it existed at one point.

I think a lot of people use Tailscale and add their external clients to a dedicated tailnet. How are you hosting Plex without opening any ports though?

I am not a lawyer, add salt as necessary.

There are a few instances of people getting sued, but usually your ISP will get a DMCA notice and send it to you and so long as you remove the content they've DMCA'd you're usually fine. I also believe that in Canada there's a $5000 limit to the damages they can recover so it's usually not worth it for them to hire a lawyer, which again, I am not.

Yeah basically all a "distribution" is is a selection of software and configurations, and they distribute (hence the name) that software and configurations as a bundle. It definitely can be daunting to learn all of this at once as a newcomer, but on the other side of that coin I've seen many people begin their Linux journey on a "beginner friendly" distribution who come to see that distro's configs as default and need to unlearn/relearn many habits as they progress through their journey. I think, too, that often people who are immersed in the Linux world don't have a great perspective on what is/isn't confusing for a new user and often end up obfuscating things with other things that are just as complicated, if not more.

This is true, but I don’t know if you’d be counted as a seeder on that list though if you don’t have the full torrent.

Something I've found very helpful is time tracking. I have an app on my phone that is always running a timer where I input a task and a project (basically a category for the task). What this has forced me to do is to consciously decide when I'm doing a thing, and it acts as a kind of lightning rod for my attention. When I start a new task, I need to decide that is what I'm going to do and put it into the app, and if I find myself drifting from the task I must either stay focussed or decide that I'm not able to focus on the current task and instead focus on what is distracting me. It helps me remind myself that "now is the time for X, not for Y."

I love how it just barely moves it's one hand and screams it's exactly like me when I exercise.

I only have messed with it a bit, but it does require a SMTP server because it relies on sending email for account setup.

Depending on what level of malware you’re worried about, running it in a Docker container could be a solution.