PDFs might be your sticking point. I’ve not found any software that will handle all the different things you can do with acrobat in an easy way. But I have to heavily modify PDFs from time to time, and you may not have nearly the needs I do.
I’d suggest checking out libre office, and see if you can find a PDF application that satisfies you. The app store on pop os is really good, as is the interface, and if you don’t like tiling window managers, you can turn it off.
Another suggestion is to recognize you’re a novice. If you read something that sounds like a perfect setup, but it’s a little complicated, put it off. You don’t want to get in over your head, because linux distros will not keep you from breaking things. The defaults of any large distribution are a pretty safe bet.
Have you ever held a Bat’leth? Because it makes you feel powerful. Klingons are interested in feeling powerful and striking fear in their enemies, and for that the Bat’leth is pretty freaking great.
I mean, we’re human, so I get the whole Indiana Jones “Ima just shoot the guy” thing. But we’re talking about Klingons. Even if the weapon is objectively bad, there is honor in killing an enemy the hard way.
Is it the petzl zipka? Because if it isn’t I’d love to know what it is. I have one, but they’ve apparently stopped making them, and it’s so much better not having an elastic strap.
Another problem with phone number requirement. EU phone number? Get out of here. Otherwise you’re right. With a vpn, what’s to stop you from continuing to use it.
I’ve been using linux for a long time, and I have a background in this kind of stuff, but it’s not my career and I don’t keep as current as if it was, so i’m going to give my point of view on this.
A zfs array is probably the legit way to go. But there’s a huge caveat there. If you’re not working with this technology all the time, it’s really not more robust or reliable for you. If you have a failure in several years, you don’t want to rely on the fact that you set it up appropriately years ago, and you don’t want to have to relearn it all just to recover your data.
Mergerfs is basically just files on a bunch of disks. Each disk has the same directory structure and your files just exist in one of those directories on a single disk, and your mergerfs volume shows you all files on all disks in that directory. There are finer points of administration, but the bottom line is you don’t need to know a lot, or interact with mergerfs at all, to move all those files somewhere else. Just copy from each disk to a new drive and you have it all.
Snapraid is just a snapshot. You can use it to recover your data if a drive fails. The commands are pretty simple, and relearning that isn’t going to be too hard several years down the road.
The best way isn’t always the best if you know you’re not going to keep current with the technology.
If you want to be able to grow, check out mergerfs and snapraid. If you’re wanting to use a pi and USB drives it’s probably more what you’re wanting than zfs and raid arrays. It’s what i’m using and I’ve been really happy with it.