I know this is cliche but try Linux when support is dropped, at least if your workflow permits it. Anything is better than sending a perfectly good system to the landfill…
The shitty thing is that I have everything in my house just working right now. Media server, photo backup, drive pooling, snapraid, kids’ PCs, etc etc.
Can I do all this on Linux? Of course. Would it arguably be better on Linux? Yeah probably. Do I want to invest God knows how many hours/days/weeks switching things over, debugging issues on all my devices trawling through forums to find fixes…? Hell no.
Just trying to help. I don’t really care for tinkering with stuff either but most of that stuff your talking about sounds pretty trivial on linux. Not trying to dismiss any of your concerns.
I understand how daunting it is to start from scratch though. I’ve done it twice, once when I switched to Mac OS and the second time to Linux. It’s always rough finding those alternative apps when your apps aren’t there and getting used to a new paradigm.
If you want to use the Mac in a way Apple never intended it was a royal pain in the ass to hack at it. And I didn’t switch to Linux for a long time because games and general polish. I blame x11 for Linux desktop jank but major desktops like kde plasma have their bugs too.
Nothing pissed me off more than being an honest citizen buying two copies of windows 10 at full price just to get treated like a freeloader or someone who downloaded a free to play game. When they required a Microsoft account I left.
