You can self host VS Code.

This is why I use OMV and Nextcloud. A daily backup job duplicates everything to OMV. A weekly OMV backup job goes into Skiff drive. Fool me once…

Since when is Gnome the default? The default varies by distro…

Just use imgflip.com - that’s all it does is add text to images.

What doesn’t make sense is your use of the term “offline editor” - it’s entirely nonsensical in this context. If they can’t use an offline editor, they won’t be any better with an online editor. It’s like saying you need a 4 door car because you can’t drive a 2 door car - it’s the same thing with more seats. Photo editing is photo editing regardless of where the software is hosted.

I use Tailscale on PFsense. Just advertise the route to the local subnet and accept routes on whatever machine you’re accessing from and you’ve got yourself a pretty much plug and play solution.

Are you using /etc/resolv.conf?

I don’t use proton but I found with tailscale it’s much more stable to use systemd-resolved because it doesn’t overwrite resolv.conf. I don’t know if this is the case with proton as I don’t know how it treats different resolvers but I would look into it.

Both Wayland and Pipewire have been the direct cause of unusable VMs. Replacing them with Xorg and Pulse makes all the VMs usable again. This has been the case in VMWare, Virtualbox, and Hyper-V. VMs in Proxmox have been less problematic but still problematic.

ZimaBoard 832 with two 2TB SSDs and OMV is my setup. Pair it with tailscale for availability wherever you go.

I wasn’t a fan of Immich. Although I’m trying to replace Google photos soy opinion is a bit skewed.

TL;DR: ChromeOS is Linux but it’s not Linux but it’s a Linux so count it as a Linux but not Linux. Half.