You’re gonna tear your hair out trying to run AI on a laptop that old.
Definitely either a NAS or a media server would be the best.
If you’re into the learning side, like you said a Linux box you don’t have to worry of breaking would be good, or something to do with networking. Maybe some home automation, dashboard, etc…
WSL is available on Windows Home.
You’re thinking about HyperV, not the “Virtual Machine Platform”, the former require Pro+, and the latter is available on all (needs to be enabled), and is what enabled WSL, Docker, VirtualBox in HyperV.
Bad naming IMO and misused by many vendors.
Beefy can mean things to different people too. I have a mobile 1660ti and it can generate images in decent times (about 40seconds for a 20iteration image from prompt)
I’m slightly lacking in VRAM though, something 8GB VRAM would allow you to use most models.
I agree with the self sustainability.
I started browsing fediverse a bit back, but there wasn’t enough content so I would go back to Reddit (mostly to catch up on news and discussions).
But I’m going to Reddit less and less now as there are more people engaging in fediverse content. I now mostly go back for specific subreddits, but not the general feeds anymore.