I understand that you are materially constrained.

If you don’t already have your solution, I wonder if you could Ventoy (using as a verb here) a partition of the NVME as an install volume.

My USB drive is actually a spare NVME in a USB enclosure, ironically enough.

I had tricks using native disks reliably in VirtualBox which I had been dabbling with for more than 15 years, and I had to move to using QEMU for my NAS disks. I quotient recommend these paths for noob level project.

I and others agree… It’s funny when someone says “I want a solution besides X” and we all kinda have to say “uhhhh, srsly, X is the answer” - - also another shout out for Ventoy. Complete game changer. I have a 16GB drive with Win10 IoT LTSC, new install apps and drivers for Windows, and 2 or 3 Linux distros.

Edited, typos

Electricity for heating water (tankless) under my roof is approximately 18% of our total consumption, averaged across the months, which cost roughly $25 max, in my market. You’re right that I could aggressively reduce my consumption there and probably cut that number in half.

It is absolutely a luxury I am affording myself in this chapter of my life and hopefully in all the other chapters, too, especially if we add on solar capacity to the house.

Semi-retired, or “professionally jobless” here. I’m redditing or wikipedia’ing or you tubing under the Steam. Lol.

A whole lot of judgy comments throughout this thread. I’ve been bringing my phone into the shower for the past 15 years, and quit bagging them since all the flagship handsets were IP67 rated or stronger.

I accept the liability of it, and it has not been a problem for me by and large, and I have no regrets.

I would estimate as much as 5% or 8% of my phone use has been standing there in an enjoyably hot shower and listening to podcasts or puzzling through some idea (building an estimated moving cost to relocate to another market for example, and all its tax implications) or catching up on all the personal correspondence that I had ignored for the day.

If that makes me a monster, at least I’ll be an specially clean one.