I’m a Linux sysadmin. I was issued a Windows laptop. But I have been allowed to add a second NVME drive to it that has Debian 12 installed. So Debian 12 has been my main working environment.

I also have a desktop in my cube running Windows.

I rarely boot my laptop to windows. But if I need to do something with modifying Windows smb shares or active directory I just remote into my Windows Desktop. I’m also running a ssh server on my windows desktop so about half of my windows active directory work is done via powershell over ssh.

I would install truenas scale on the optiplex and run plex or jellyfin as a app from truenas.

Adding a second large drive for redundancy would be good, also a smallish ssd for the truenas os to run from.

My personal setup takes this level deeper. I have a desktop computer running proxmox. proxmox is installed on a nvme drive. I have a VM running truenas that I have passed my sata controller to. So my 2 10TB sata drives and my 500Gb sata ssd show up as native drives in truenas. The 10tb mirror holds my media library and long term backups. The 500gb ssd is for running apps on trunas like plex, syncthing.