even really poorly funded library networks I've seen in the states tend to have pretty great Blu-ray selections, not just DVDs

I started ripping on Linux this year and it's honestly been pretty easy, I just use makemkv to rip and it wasn't much trouble to get running. you'll wanna flash libredrive to your drive to rip 4k Blu-rays and iirc it's a pain on Linux but if you've got a windows PC anywhere you can flash it pretty effortlessly and then you don't have to worry about it ever again

Don’t even need a windows PC. You can do USB passthrough with KVM. Just setup a Windows VM, USB passthrough the drive, do it, through the VM away.

The iso can be downloaded officially from MS, activation is not needed for this.

If it takes more than half an hour on Linux just so it in the VM.