Sorry, Microsoft might make crappy software, but they aren’t actively trying to invalidate my existence as a person. Absolutely not comparable.

Ive never had to download a codec to use VLC, it should come built-in with every codec you may reasonably encounter on commercial DVDs.

Is “prior art” not still a thing?

I mean, that was Getty Image’s whole case against Google’s “view image” button. And Getty won that legal battle, so clearly they have some legal ground to stand on, even though most people would think it’s bullshit.

You could always put it into service as a network wide ad blocker with PiHole. Might also speed up web browsing a bit too, since PiHole also works as a DNS cache.

I would look for a dongle that specifically markets itself as being Raspberry Pi compatible. Most stuff you find will prioritize Windows, but if it’s marketed to work with the Pi you know it’ll have at least some level of Linux compatibility. Once you find one, try to figure out what chipset it uses, then search if it’s supported by a handful of the distros you wanna try.