> I don't have a Linux machine to test it ... it might be a plan to put Linux of some kind on that so I can test things and try to find my way around *nix

Bod, I recently installed Ubuntu WSL2 on my Windows 11 laptop with a single wsl --install command (and a couple of reboots) and it's been working flawlessly since.

For more detail on what I did see: Re^3: Perl XAMPP DB Connect issue (Windows/Strawberry?) - Perl on Windows/WSL References