As you can see, I too have made a “least bad” choice for pragmatic reasons.

I take no pride in correcting you.

Actually, if you hit those 3 dots on the top right and select “All Permissions”, you’ll see there’s a whole host of things it demands that you can’t opt out of.

They are removing the hard to use old version that was inherited from the original Emby code.
For years now, the developers have been advocating the use of a reverse proxy to provide TLS.

It’s commentary like this that leads to so much industrial equipment (printers, scales, barcode readers, PLCs etc) still having RS-232 on them.

And dammit, you’re right, that stone age shit just works.

I can’t think of a standalone gui app that does this (and a simple google search didn’t find one).
If you have a gui desktop (gnome,kde,xfce,lxqt,enlightenment,budgie…) it will have a built in function in it’s settings to do this, or leverage one of the parent ones (ie budgie is based on gnome, lxqt on kde).
If your custom environment is pared down to the point where you don’t have an equivalent to gnome-system-tools and don’t want to install it, you might have to just use date at the command line.

Honestly sounds like a job for a Raspberry Pi Zero.
Small battery pack and a USB key, a bit of software setup, off you go.

Install Raspbian: https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/getting-started.html#raspberry-pi-imager

Set it up as a hotspot:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/configuration.html#enable-hotspot

Configure Samba share:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/remote-access.html#samba

I have a friend group that insist on all events being planned through facebook.
I’ve missed out on events in the past due to not taking part.
It’s no longer a hill I wish to die on.

I agree and use Signal myself.
But people like the extra features of WhatsApp like desktop/web clients with seamless history sync and all the other little things that WhatsApp provides.
The average Joe doesn’t even think about security or privacy, they just know that the results of using WhatsApp are superior than using SMS.
iMessage is a non starter everywhere out of the US, it just doesn’t have the market penetration.
As an Australian, no one I know (many of whom own iPhones) talk about the blue-green bubble stuff.
They recognise where the fault lies and simply don’t use the app.

In certain places like India, WhatsApp is the default means of communication for everyone.
You can use it without phone data if you are on wifi, it supports better quality than sms for sending images, you can video chat with it, it’s cross platform, etc etc.

What’s more amazing to me is that it’s not more popular in western countries.

Funnily enough, I’ve got a few friends who are long time iPhone users, who actually point this stuff out themselves:

“OMG! Have you seen the eye watering price of the new one?”
“Yay, I finally get stuff you’ve had for years.”

Neither party would ever consider anything else, and they both buy the new model every year. 🤷

At this point I admit that my reasons for choosing Android all those years ago no longer exist or matter, but I can’t imagine changing ecosystem either.

I think all the existing answers are on the basis of creating a new Linux VM.

And if I understand you correctly, you already have a bare metal Linux install that you want to run whilst Linux is up.

This is the best search result I could find: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=93437

It sounds like Virtualbox will indeed create a pseudo vhdx that points to a real partition, but windows is going to give you permissions drama.

The above link is out of date though, so its best viewed as info rather than guide.

Good luck.

A lockdown browser?

If you need to use windows because of a software issue, not a hardware issue, you’re probably best off running windows in a VM.
That way your linux install is making the WPA3 connection, and as far as the Windows install is concerned, it’s on a wired lan.
This has the added benefit of not having to reboot, you just always start linux and turn the windows VM on and off as required.

This requirement is designed to be hard, and as such is a major red flag to me.
What else is this company going to be difficult with?
Can i only get customer support or cancel my account in person, between 9-4 on the 2nd Friday of the month?
I would consider alternatives, if possible.