If you are using PvE for linux "VMs" those probably aren't actually VMs but LXC containers. And if you are running docker in one of those, you've got containers in your containers.

Welcome to the club.

Depending on the original source codec, yes, but h265 can do that as well. For me the nice part is the firefox browser support and increasing device support. h265 seems to be stuck in patent hell and not going anywhere.

Nextcloud is a nice centralized system for that, you can setup shared folders that appear as a weblink that anyone can upload to, but it would require someone (likely you) to set up and maintain a LAMP stack application.

Otherwise if you want a simpler "share files between PCs" kind of application then Syncthing would be great for that. Install it on both PCs, link them, then setup a shared folder. The contents of that folder are then mirrored between the pcs.

I prefer av1 to h265. h264 can play on anything, and while its debatable whether av1 is better than h265, av1 is supported in all browsers and gaining hardware support rapidly.

https://torrentfreak.com/iconic-torrent-site-rarbg-shuts-down-all-content-releases-stop-230531/

Ya, the original site is gone. There are mirrors cropping up based on a db dump of some kind, but the old site is gone.

usenet for bulk current media, occasionally torrents for niche stuff, but now that rarbg is gone I'm going to have to find a new tracker. I use a seedbox for most torrent activity these days as well, too risky with ISPs clamping down.

Once upon a time I used DC++ for things, but that was more than a decade ago and the last time I tried it all the severs seems to be in eastern eu countries and very shady. If anyone knows a good DC++ server I'd love to hear more.