I understand the need for security, but default is powerful, which is why the eu requires os vendors to provide a browser choice screens instead of letting the os vendors to pick their own default browser. Without coupling this restriction with a browser choice screen, this would guarantee to increase edge market share simply because it’s the default.

Maybe try Marker, which uses AI stuff as part of their OCR process.

Stirling also support OCR using OCRmyPDF.

You can also use GPT4-V (e.g. via this library) to perform the OCR. It’ll cost money though.

Create a sparse max-2TB qcow2 image, store it in the physical partition and attach it to the VM. -> rejected by me because the partition inside the qcow2 image needs constant resizing as your storage needs grow.

I don’t see how this is an issue? If you set the partition to e.g. 1TB, the qcow2 image will automatically resize itself as the drive is filling up, right?

You can try running ReactOS on a VM running directly inside your browser: https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=reactos