I dicked around with the VM route for a while and could never really get it working 100% to my liking. There was always a trade-off. I ended up just getting a second PC and tucking it in a cabinet out of sight. When I need Windows I just use remote desktop to connect to it.

Do your friend a favor and install Windows back on his laptop for him.

They have their uses. In particular they’re useful for easily getting applications your system repositories don’t have or getting more up to date version of applications. Downsides are certainly the space all the redundant dependencies take up and the sandboxing can be a PITA especially if you have an application that needs to run another application. Overall I think they’re the best “third party” package system available but they’re not great.

App Images do suck, but I don’t think flatpak is much better. It’s more of a lesser of two evils situation. Snap isn’t even in the conversation.

Same I was taught. Think it’s official. Professor was a stickler for following official rules so I doubt he would deviate.

Who is Denshi?