I had a great time. I studied electrical engineering and my department had moved from using Matlab to Python which made my life a lot easier. There was one class where we had to use a Matlab library but I was able to use Octave with the library. There weren’t any other programs we had to install there weren’t compatible with Linux. A lot of classes just required a web browser, no additional software, so no issues there.

I’m a fan of qtile. Used it when it was x11 only and use it on Wayland now.

I use a Belkin RT3200 (same hardware as Linksys E8450). They go for pretty cheap on ebay and I have no complaints.

I do the same. I have Debian with KDE and Kodi autostart on boot. Use Kodi most of the time but can tab out if needed.

I’ve tried proxmox! Don’t currently have any hardware to run it but excited to do it. Part of the reason I don’t want to put it on the mini PC is that I can’t connect 3.5" drives over sata. I want to use the PC I plan on building as a combo server/NAS.

I am planning on a lot of services, but we’ll see about the rack of servers.

No, off the shelf routers are usually ARM and opnsense is x86 only.

There’s support coming for wifi 6 Qualcomm Atheros chips. The images are still in the snapshot/release candidate stage, so not a full release yet, but they are working.