Yeah, I like having a few isos on Ventoy for live booting from random PCs for troubleshooting. Very convenient being able to have multiple architectures, DEs, versions of distros to boot from on one drive.

It is well established, if niche, software. I think your sketchometer needs calibration.

I would recommend Mint for an easier transition, its what I jumped to from Ubuntu due to Canonical’s behavior and I’ve been happy. It is definitely simpler to use than Debian - which is not to say anything bad about Debian. It’s just less hand-holdy. I like it for servers.

Emphasis on “a bit,” it truly is a simple task to automate. I don’t think that anyone who has need for dynamic DNS should realistically have much trouble tackling that problem.

For anyone who might attempt this and isn’t sure how, here’s what you need. You need a service controlling your domain with API support for updating your DNS records - some have been mentioned here, I just use gandi.net. You need to enable the API for your account/domain. Figure out how to run the command you need against the API from a scripting language of your choice - there should be documentation for the API, and it should be a single API call. Figure out how to determine your server IP from within the same scripting language. Then, write your simple script that determines the right IP and updates the record if it doesn’t match.

All you need to do then is automate running the script - on Linux, a cron job or a systemd service and timer.

I am on Mint, but I have a GPU accelerated VM running Windows 10 for gaming. It performs very well, but you run into the occasional game that detects VMs and will refuse to run.