For getting nice metadata musicbrainz is the best out there imo. Sort your collection, anything new you add, run it through musicbrainz. If your music is missing from musicbrainz: add it! It is the most complete, free accessible database there is. Discogs for example is more complete but not the same level of free to access.
Beets is supposed to be good but I find it complicated, steep learning curve.
Just try it with the old laptop. I personally found dietpi the incredibly easy entry. Super bare bones Linux actually meant for raspberry pi and such, but you can run it on any old laptop. Using your all gaming rig might be a high energy usage if you're just gonna run barely more than a NAS. If you do it with the laptop, take out the battery or put a timer on charger outlet, permanently connected and charging with a system that isn't actively managing the battery and charging could get you a spicy pillow quickly.
There's still a second natural entry, it is being critical and annoyed by corporate greed in apps, streaming services, ads, accounts for everything etc. The privacy/piracy entry.
Steam deck works very well for retrogaming and for running non-steam games. You can set up emulators rather easily.
It's an unlocked device (unlike a Nintendo), you run on it whatever OS you want. If they would pull such moves, community developed steam OS alternatives will arise. All that's needed to run non-steam games on the device is open source.
I get your drift and there are definitely routes where that will always be the case. You can't run trains from central or eastern Europe to Portugal competitively with airplanes, never. Same goes for islands like Malta, Corsica etc. But an important part of the equation is still also how heavily travelled a route is, and somewhat if that is year round the case or mainly (short) seasonal demand. Airplanes are more like busses, it's easy to shift them around to meet a seasonal demand. But trains move a lot more people at once. A TGV can transport up to 550-600 people at once, 2 trains coupled that's more than 1000 people at once. The ICE4 gets to above 800 people at once. Most main aircraft types are 250-300 people capacity. The flight itself is fast, but the entire travel often is not, because the train brings you to a city center while many airports are 20 or more km outside the cities and because of regulations (the airports are way stricter controlled) causing long waiting times. And the main reason of all, even if the airplane is faster and always will be: the climate impact. Tho railway is for sure not zero impact, airplanes according to most stuff I've read is still way way worse impact so making trains more attractive on year-round very often travelled medium distance routes still pays off. It should, for example, not be okay that the airplane is faster and cheaper between Amsterdam and Berlin. Yeah, it's a bit more than 600 km, but it is a very often travelled route, year round, the geography and population density in between is very fit for high speed, the amount of stops in between could be very manageable (4 or 5), while it connects 2 very big population centers. But because of lack of investment on such a main route, it currently takes 6 hours by train. By airplane including check-in, security, being there early, etc it's like 3,5 hours. It's a really fine example of where train could become a lot more competitive with strategic investments with in the end a lower climate impact and lower dependency on imported fossil fuels (large electric planes are still a pipedream for now). Speed isn't everything, it's on many routes also just the lack of coordination between different national railways' schedules making it a headache by train currently.
Yes true but the range of how far train can be preferable above plane can be expanded if network better run on a European level and some big strategic investments (not that different from what France did in the 80's and 90's) on quite a few very often travelled routes. Amsterdam-Berlin is an easy example, but there are many like that. Currently on many routes the plane>train is like ~300 km, while on many that could become 600-700km with either high speed tracks or more sleeper train options or better connections. On some big routes the train>plane is up to 700-800 km already.
You do need that if you're for example traveling from Amsterdam to Berlin, Copenhagen, Gothenburg etc, the kind of travel this article and post are about. Amsterdam to Berlin takes 7,5 hours, at least, by train that's ridiculously slow for just 650 km. About 1/4 of that is in NL, runs through a part of NL which is not at all as densily populated as the Randstad is.
Dutch have good national trains but are also part of the reason for poor trains on European level. The Dutch have built next to nothing high speed tracks, NS also don't invest in night trains.
Or a second bridge a bit further only for pedestrians and cyclists so you don't even have to be near the cars and the walk or cycle becomes even more attractive and less noisy
Depends where in Italy or Spain. Italy is very nice because it's almost always sunny and the food is always good and cheap. And there are so many kilometres of coastline... you can still find what you want too: small not completely tourist overrun coastal villages. Unfortunately it's getting too warm now in summer because climate change.
Okay cool. Within Brussels it's sorta fine indeed, I guess I'm biased by the commuter view ;) Within the city it's definitely getting better the last few years.
The main policy issue is for sure the cars for pay... Some politicians wanted to abolish it since years, but it only grows year after year. Recently they made it only tax-friendly for electric cars, saying the system must stay because it helps transition to electric cars faster (I think that transition would happen very fast anyhow and I think transitioning to (e-)bicycles is better). Understandably, people who currently have such a "free" car from work don't want to give it up (and that's a lot of voters), as they also use it to go on holiday with the family and such.
A main infrastructure issue is the tunnel (you probably travelled in it) running north to south. So many different trains in Belgium get squozen in the same little piece Brussels North - Central - Brussels South, the tunnel is very saturated, and messy with highspeed, intercity, local and S trains all going there. It just needs 1 little incident and plenty of trains all over the country get delayed.
For getting nice metadata musicbrainz is the best out there imo. Sort your collection, anything new you add, run it through musicbrainz. If your music is missing from musicbrainz: add it! It is the most complete, free accessible database there is. Discogs for example is more complete but not the same level of free to access.
Beets is supposed to be good but I find it complicated, steep learning curve.