Accidentally turning on the radio, deciding to roll with it, going to the local classic rock station, and hearing Bleed It Out by Linkin Park is indeed a pretty terrible feeling.
CrazyLikeGollum
It's about a five minute drive to the nearest grocery store which is the cheaper one and about fifteen minutes to the more expensive one.
The cheaper one is an area with a higher crime rate and there have been a decent number of thefts out of cars in the parking lot there. I usually try go avoid going there but it's open later and sometimes I need to get something after work when the nicer one is closed.
I can't speak to the Quest support as I don't have one, but my Index definitely had issues when I first switched to Linux fulltime. I had been dual-booting for about a year prior to that. But over the last year, it's gotten better and most titles I've tried lately seem to just work the same way they did on Windows.
I do still have this persistent issue where my computer treats the headset as the primary display during bootup if have it plugged in, but that's OS independent and starts at POST.
I've also seen some changelogs a while back suggesting Valve was trying to get OpenVR and SteamVR more compatible and make them both work better on Linux. I don't know what issues you were having or how recently but it might be worth digging into again if it's something you care about.
I honestly haven't really noticed any major build quality issues. Just that the two separators on either side of the trackpad module don't quite sit level with the trackpad module itself and if I'm being really nitpicky there's slightly more deck flex in the keyboard than I like.
Other than those two things, the laptop is solid, at least under my usage patterns. If you were swapping IO modules frequently then I could see wear on the plastic edge of the modules and laptop body and maybe the usb-c connector itself potentially becoming an issue after a couple of years.
VR gaming is still pretty niche and expensive if you want a truly good experience. There also haven't really been any major advancements in the space since the Valve Index almost six years ago.
Inside out tracking is still not where it needs to be and the base stations for outside in tracking are cumbersome.
Additionally, for the full promise of VR gaming to be realized you really need accurate full body tracking to include full hand tracking, a compact, easily stowable, but accurate omnidirectional treadmill, and some way to do all of the tracking without the need for base stations.
And all of that needs to be standardized across the industry.
I too enjoy VR gaming, but there's been basically no movement in the VR space in a long time, and to most people VR is a novelty at best. Unless someone gives us a decade's worth of advancement inside of a year or two, I expect modern VR will go the way of the virtual boy. Only to be revived again in 20-30 years.
Calibre cant natively strip DRM from ebooks, but there are third-party plugins for it that can and integrate pretty seamlessly into the process of adding the book to your library.
I used it to strip the DRM from all of my Amazon bought ebooks back before they removed the download option.