I bought some sinopé thermostats and I’m happy with them. The have zigbee versions that I’m using and other than having to resend the time on daylight savings time changes they’ve been solid. I think they have a model that supports a thermocouple for floor applications.
As an immigrant that came to the West Coast I appreciate what you say here as it helps me (us) understand better the reasoning behind the banning of religious symbols in Quebec.
Have you considered installing Proxmox? That way you can then test as many distros as possible and even play a bit with containers. I configured it recently and I'm having a lot of fun being able to take snapshots and then doing crazy things with an easy way to recover from my failed experiments.
Can't believe no one has mentioned Home Assistant. Automation engine for home and have local control over almost everything "smart" at home.