Popup ads? Where are they? That’s not something I’ve heard of, but then I always use an adblocker…

I used it for years on a raspberry pi, and it was great, very easy to manage storages and different ways of sharing over a network.

If you are after a Debian based system, with an interface for file server/backups/network storage, with a (web) interface, you are pretty much describing https://www.openmediavault.org/ . Decent plugin ecosystem to set up Wireguard, as well as a web interface to set up docker based containers for anything.

What kind of dystopia are you living in that listening to music or podcasts would ‘raise the alarm’? Yes, don’t do anything inappropriate (definitely no piracy, obviously), or detrimental to productivity, but listening to music? Would definitely quit if an employer had a problem with that.

Is this a thing that’s considered ‘normal’ in the US? (I’m assuming US mainly because other countries are not generally so hostile towards employees)