It took 6 years for the Carlton Tavern to be rebuilt. I think this was the first pub ordered to be rebuilt.
The building was being considered by Historic England for Grade II listing when it was unexpectedly demolished on 8 April 2015 by its owner …
…
On 12 April 2021, the pub reopened …
These may help you to understand what Secure Boot is.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-secure-boot
How much do you want to spend?
If you go for a Raspberry Pi have a look at Terrapi cases as well the obvious Argon ones.
Another option would be a Zimbaboard. It is more expensive but it has dual SATA connector (you need to buy a Y cable with the Zimbaboard) and there are 3D print designs to create a single unit, e.g. https://www.printables.com/model/224057-zimaboard-dual-hdd-stand.
I’m not sure about PoE and a NAS. Will a PoE HAT or similar provide enough power for the board and the drives?
Perhaps this page in Mint documentation may help https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/burn.html#how-to-make-a-bootable-usb-stick
The following video is more advanced but covers Ventoy which lets you have a bootable disk that you can copy ISO files onto. You will then have an USB with multiple distributions that you can pick and choose between at boot time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10L8aCY3VBs
Firewall - While this tutorial is Ubuntu 16.04 it should work current versions of Ubuntu https://www.linuxbabe.com/desktop-linux/getting-started-gufw-ubuntu-16-04 It should work for other distributions once you change the package manager.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(software) I just searched for the “samba computer” and this was the first link.
See if you can find some introductory videos that are suitable for you on YouVideo or elsewhere that are suitable for you to work out if you are ready to set up your first home server.
If you just need some storage you could just get a “cheap” USB storage spinning rust external hard drive and move the data that you don’t need day to day onto the drive. At a later date you get a Raspberry Pi or second hand small PC and use the PC as a server with the same drive attached.
This is what the Microsoft system requirements page for Windows 11 says
Windows 11 Pro for personal use and Windows 11 Home require internet connectivity and a Microsoft account during initial device set-up.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windows-11-specifications
I guess you were building machines with a Windows Enterprise license. This would explain why you had the option to setup an offline account.
Steps to setup a local account on Windows 11 Home https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-without-microsoft-account
Without new programming languages we would still be using FORTRAN, AGOL and LISP.
https://fortran-lang.org/learn/quickstart/hello_world/
https://lisp-lang.org/learn/first-steps
One reason why new languages are developed is the creation of a “Domain-specific language” or DSL. See Wikipedia for more information.
Programming languages are tools you pick the one for the job, there are situations where Java’s garbage collection could be a problem so it would not the right tool to use.
The official docs for Toon Boom Harmony 22 seem to have a page on how to install under Linux (RHEL or CentOS 6 or 7).
https://docs.toonboom.com/help/harmony-22/advanced/installation/basic/linux/about-basic-installation-linux.html https://docs.toonboom.com/help/harmony-22/advanced/installation/basic/linux/install-on-linux.html
You may get it working under Mint but it won’t be supported.
You may have to look at a virtual machine or just put up with Windows because you need this software.