I'm glad these things happen... it keeps everyone aware that cloud is fragile and Plan B should be considered for mission critical tasks.
I'm also hoping that it will improve cloud resiliency because a complete / partial restart of cloud systems needs a whole different approach than maintaining a running system.
Install the HA Companion app on your phone (I use the "minimal" one.from FDroid), and enable the Alarm Sensor - that provides the next alarm time (so, be careful if you have different alarms throughout the day!)
Then, I use that time to trigger the lights to start ramping up about 30mins beforehand.
Also... be careful to check if you're at home... took me a while to realise the lights were coming on whilst we were away.
Oh, and I use Simple Alarm Clock - also from FDroid - because it fades in the alarm sound.
Yeah, this is really the point - reliance on cloud (someone else's computer) for fundamental functionality isn't a good idea.
Glass is going to break before anyone bothers with the lock, so it's not a security device it's a convenience device... but not if you can't use it... and you don't have keys with you...
But, ok, if it's fully locally controlled (HA compatible as you mention), then you're more in control of your own home.
I've not seen the appeal of "smart" locks - on houses.
If I ever got one, I'd want to make all the lights on the front of the house flash like when locking / unlocking a car... maybe even with a bleep / chirp 😉
I run it baremetal, the photos / videos are all on a separate location (so are "Externsl Libraries" in Immich) and are backed up...
As far as the Immich application itself, I'm not currently backing up anything as I've been trialing it... but, I'll aim to backup any configurations, but I'm thinking to maybe ignore any database - it can just relearn everything if I need to do a restore.... depends how big that DB is...
My guess... you have some hardware that Linux and Windows communicate with differently.
Either the hardware or the Linux driver is potentially broken.
If you're able to (hard with a laptop, I know), disconnect as many things as you can - even take out the Windows hardrive - and see if that helps.
For all the suggestions about the journal, you will see random things at the very end, but see if there's anything common from earlier in the boot process.
sudo journalctl -xe may be helpful here.
sudo to ensure you're seeing the entire journal
x adds additional explanations
e jumps to the end (again, probably look further back)
Yeah, that was kinda my thoughts too.