Having had similar hardware and reading about your preferences let me throw some cents in the hat:
Sim stuff runs mostly ootb. I don't have a fancy rig, but both my G29 and x52 pro work perfectly fine. At most, some games will map the axis wrong, but that's easily fixable (eg. AMS2 swaps clutch and brakes and inverts all axis).
The insullary apps such as TrackIR and controller stuff is already available, although not official. There's Oversteer for wheels and GX52 for hotas.
I don't have a TrackIR device but I've used FacetrackNoIR with the neuralnet face tracker and besides needing a bit of background lighting, it woked fine.
It's not all perfect and depending on the games, it might need some tinkering. For example Mechwarrior 5 refuses to work properly with my hotas, and when I had a weaker CPU, Beam.ng was unusable with traffic/opponents. Some older titles are a pain to set up, like the older WRC games that had some obscure config files for the mappings. The upside is that you can back up your "fake windows C:" (aka as compatdata folder) once you got everything the way you like it.
I mostly do office type stuff and vector graphics along with CNC, and the proprietary software I need runs 90% fine on wine/bottles, so I haven't had much of any blocker issues with work stuff.
I've been running Linux way before proton was a thing, and I'm really happy about how things are moving nowadays. I got used to the gnome workflow and now any other OS feels cumbersome and clunky, but YMMV.
TL; DR:
PRO: most sim stuff just works
CON: some games perform a bit worse
PRO: most hardware runs OOTB and popular gear have apps for setup and options
CON: those are unofficial and might not support all bells and whistles
CON: some games are finnicky to set up, especially with external software addons (eg crewchief, ED companion, TrackIR)
PRO: you can save your games prefix so all that work is portable/reproducible
most office stuff is more than adequate for everyday work.
Unless the crook happens to be extremely nerdy or its law enforcement, already being a Linux formatted partition feels it should be enough for a rando breaking in and stealing a computer.
That being said, something like a PiKVM connected to your server (and Tailscale) could let you enable both UEFI/boot password and propt for LUKS decryption upon boot.
I tried grocy but it was too cumbersome for day to day usage. Ended up using Nextcloud:
Created a set of calendars/todo lists and set them to shared. One for chores, another for appointments and last one for shopping list.
JTX board app for android phones (also davx5 for syncing, but that was already installed on most for personal info sync and backups).
Added those NC to my HomeAssistant and replaced the default shopping list with the NC ones.
(optional) added some geofence zones on HA on regular shopping spots, and an automation that sends the shopping list as a notification to whoever is nearby.
Setup was a bit hit and miss until I figured stuff out but it's been working fine for us for the better part of a year now.
Does anybody know if it's possible to use this to control case fans based on sensor's temps other than the CPU ones? I've been fiddling with it for 10 minutes and can't figure it out.
I have an oversized CPU cooler and a pretty closed case (thermaltake view27). For now I'm brute forcing airflow with the 3 intake front fans but it gets loud even while idling.
Since the cooler is oversized, by default the case fans won't spin up faster even when my GPU is dumping tons of heat into the case. I'd like to set it so it takes the temps off a motherboard sensor rather than the cpu
A few years ago I got a laptop with a busted video output, installed CasaOS and that kicked off a learning experience that continues to this day.
I'm now running a 2 node proxmox deployment with several LXC containers and a HomeAssistant VM. I self-host most of my stuff for me and my family.
If it wasn't for CasaOS, I'd probably had tried proxmox and fled in horror of the difficulty to grasp what it's doing.
Also IIRC Casa now uses proper docker-compose exports, while I was using it, it was a self-rolled json file you couldn't really import on other platforms. So enjoy Casa, and when you feel like it's hindering your learning or desires, jump to portainer and import your stuff with just a few clicks.
For reference, here's some of the stuff I've been hosting:
NextCloud AIO for document syncing across machines, backups and contacts/calendars/todo via DavX5 on android devices
immich replaces google Photos so I don't have to ever "solve" a storage issue for any family member getting those googleOne popups
HomeAssistant is still a rabbit hole on it's own, but I love tinkering and automating stuff
Paperless-ngx solved my download folder always full of random invoice PDFs as well as referencing documents and manuals
Jellyfin is not only on my main TV but also my hifi music source for mobile devices and standalone speakers
Portainer makes it super easy to spin up game servers for me and my friends in a few clicks
PiHole+Unbound makes surfing the web bareable again
And a bunch more I use on and off, like NetAlertX to map and check on my network stats, Navidrome for older devices (like iPad2) music streaming, etc
Maybe just as a flex, most times I tried connecting at 14400 it'd drop the call. Probably that's why I don't go for the greatest and latest tech purchases since then
Cut them some slack?! They've got all the slack already!