I never used Mac mini before - how is your experience with it? And also, how is its cooling, especially under heavy workloads? I always liked the idea of having a mini-PC that would fit in your pocket, but I was skeptical about Mac mini because of performance and temperature concerns. I had some experience with Raspberry Pi, but I mostly used it for pet-projects.

I also like your idea about reversing the virtual machines! The best part about it is that you wouldn't have to use OS that eats all your RAM by default. By the way, what do you think about LibreOffice? As far as I know, its Calc program replaces Excel fine, and you can open and edit Excel files without anybody noticing you're not using Excel.

And I agree with you regarding the point that it's easier to work on Linux. Every development tool just feels like it was designed to work on Linux.