You don't need any guides for it except for really niche cases.
For example Ubuntu VM; click create VM, choose Linux for the type, click next a bunch and choose your ISO image, CPU cores, and RAM. And you're done, there's no specific settings to use.
There isn't one that does catalog management too.
RawTherapee is OK for RAW editing, but that's all it does. It's a bit slow too at updating when you change things, it'll take like half a second after moving a slider instead of updating right away as you move it.
DigiKam is OK for cataloging, but it's very slow and you have to open photos in external editors, and then RAW edits you do don't show up in DigiKam unless you export to some other format first, it's a huge mess and hassle to use.
Darktable does both, but it's so insanely difficult to use that I gave up after seeing people suggesting really long tutorial videos to learn how to do basic stuff. The photo output from Darktable also never looks right compared to other programs I edit in. It also has the same slowness issue as RawTherapee.
Is there some explanation as to why Darktable is different from every other RAW editor out there? It's so complex to use even for the most basic stuff, and nothing ever looks quite right.
So you don't want to watch anything about how it's done or how it was built?
I suggest TikTok then. Or just don't click on things you don't really want to learn about.
I just gave it a try and it does not pick up my existing Thunderbird data automatically, or prompt to import it.
It works ok, I don't use it much because its a web app, so doing stuff like opening a 6000 line CSV file when I was migrating our CRM software caused it to crash/hang, or large word documents can cause it to slow down a ton.
But as a basic editor for small documents it works fine, if a bit laggy feeling for my tastes.
I just watched this a few hours ago and it's really cool! I never thought something of this speed would be possible in a garage with $1k or so in parts.
You could always add an Intel GPU in a PCIe slot, if you're going for that kind of high end build.
Alternatively if you run an Intel iGPU you don't need a Coral TPU either, as Frigate can use OpenVINO and it works as good as the Coral or better anyways.
Also if the LSI HBA is connecting to HDDs, it won't need very much bandwidth so I'm not sure if the lane restriction there would matter?
That does depend heavily on the RF environment you're in. If your house is more remote and not surrounded by other wifi networks it will be pretty stable, plenty good enough for online gaming.
Then you're all set, issue certs over DNS-01 challenge in NPM, and create records in your local DNS server that point to the NPM IP for each domain you want to use.
Windows often does feel like you're beating away a bunch of annoyances with a stick that are being thrown at you by Microsoft and other software vendors.
Linux has annoyances too but they're more in the 'oops, my stuff broke because of an update/change I made' area, and not because of some intentional thing thrown in your face.
I'm on Windows on this PC, so nothing being isolated here.