I would buy Affinity Photo if they had a Linux version. Sure, it could be run in Wine, but I don't like using it for anything except games.
cmnybo
They should have been able to put a stop to the scraping very quickly. It's not that hard to block or rate limit IPs that are causing excessive load.
The first thing I do is remove all of the foreign language fonts and documentation. That frees up a lot of space.
The 128GB blurays have always been very expensive. The smaller discs are cheaper per GB.
Another issue is that brltty can take over the serial port. The easiest fix is to just uninstall it if you don't use a braille display.
If it's not showing up in lsusb and there is no activity in syslog when connecting or disconnecting it, then the problem is not a driver. It's likely a bad cable or you got a dead module.
Why are you trying to install a driver for a CH340? The driver is already built into the kernel. Just plug it in and it will work.
A hard power off when the drives are mounted still isn't a good idea. Just turn it off during post or when the grub menu is shown.
I just add my CA to my devices and use self signed certificates for stuff on my LAN. I don't want to go through all the trouble of using lets encrypt for something that's not accessible from the internet.
I would suggest getting a router that runs OpenWRT or OPNsense. That will let you configure anything you need to. It's open source firmware so it will respect your privacy.
If you go with OPNsense, you will need separate access points since it runs on a PC. The Unifi access points work well for that.
I wouldn't get one unless it was dirt cheap. The CPU wasn't that great when it was new, now an ARM SBC will outperform it using a fraction of the power.
HP was a good company back when they primarily made test equipment. They made very good equipment that was built to last. They had very detailed documentation and service manuals so you could repair everything yourself.