I have exactly the same experience with Capture One. 
You know about FastRawViewer? It was blindingly fast on my previous PC (and current laptop), let me flip, flip, flip through shots, cull the ones that were either unrecoverable (e.g. blown highlights) or I just didnāt want. Unwanted shots moved into a separate folder, so a reversible action. I think it was USD35. It made workflow with PL on my old box much less painful as I wasnāt using PL to cull shots, just edit and export.
Also, you know Micron is ending Crucial? Iād very much advise against buying Crucial memory simply because matchingās important for dual channel and youāll end up like me with āorphanā memory. If I ever need to go to 64GB, itāll be twice as expensive as just getting a second set of matching Micron/Crucial sticks. Iāll probably never do that, but stillā¦
I agree about these affiliates, but I donāt think itās limited to DXO. Itās another topic, but we have to recognize that the web has become a real money pit, pushing people to do business with anything and everything.
Iām a bit of an older guy now, and Iāve learned (Iām still learning, itās a never-ending processā¦) not to give in to impulse and to give things time, separating āle grain de lāivraiā (the wheat from the chaff), as we say where I come from.
Iāve always been sceptical of slogans like āItās revolutionary! It will change your life as a photographer!ā.
As a Frenchie, believe me, I know how to define revolutionary. 
Itās up to us to take back control of our choices and stop 'ā de prendre des vessies pour des lanternes!ā (French proverb: to take something for what it is not).
What matters is to check how it works for us and not blindly obey the suggestions of people whose job it is to influence your choices in order to convince you, to persuade you to buy.
Especially as hobbyist, weāre in no hurry, I think so.
I couldnāt have put it better myself. I have just been adapting my Linus OS (dual boot machine). I struggled to get Irfanview to work. I have used this since 1998. Always found it great but I canāt get it to work properly in Zorin. So now I donāt have Irfanview. I gave it every chance butā¦ā¦.. So now I use another app to view jpgs and do a few small adjustments to them.
MS Office was such an amazing app. I used almost all of it albeit at a fairly rudimentary level. And gradually it morphed into a behemoth with so many bells a whistles that 99% of people would never use. Then came 365. Renting software! Linux has āforcedā me to look elsewhere and Libre Office reminds me of MS Office 2000. Back when you could right click and insert a page break, those days.
So although I knew that I should change, I hadnāt. Linus has āforcedā me to do that and it is one of the main benefits. Itās fast but far from perfect
Win10 is behaving offline and PL7 runs really well offline.
As far as affiliates are concerned. The instructional type videos are generally very good butā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ their āreviewsā of new versions are corrupt at best.
I still use MS Office 2007 Professional and have never thought I needed anything else. There is a speciial file import/export package too necessary to install but I have no problem so far reading or exporting to other later versions yet stangely enough. Next year that software is 20 years and still pretty easy and straight forward to use.
Of couse the newer 365 or One Office are integrated with Copilot and Open AIt and would be nice to have but as long as this old 2007 software still works I see no need really.
I have, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access (databases), Publisher (flyers e.t.c.), Visio (flowcharts, mimdmaps e.t.c) and Project (planning) and doesnāt really lack anything since both Google Gemini and Google Lens, Chat GPT and Copilot is integrated with Windows 11 - yesterday I just by accident stumpled over a function in the Windows Photoviewer that let us compare a picture there with āmotif look a likesā Google Lens or Bing can find on the net. Especially Google Lens is very good for determning animal or plant species and landmarks. I use Google Lens quite a lot to help me remember landmarks and places I have taken pictures of but lost the names of since many years.
Leading also to a blog using that picture:
Escape to Zanzibar, Tanzania - Realworld Adventures
(Same motif but different Masai Art)
Google Lens wrote the picture was taken near Paje on Zanzibar and the real distance to Paje from this place is 3 km - that was pretty good I think.
I will never enter a prescription on Office and canāt either see myselt using a Linux OS which main feature would be to barr me from using all Wiondows industry standard applications - even photo softwares like Photolab, Imatch and XnView that are indespensable for me and many others here.
I have seen quite a few softwares stop working after hardware or OS upgrades during the years and some because they were not in synch with Windows software development guide lines. MS Office 2007 was made by Microsoft themselves which might be one of the reasobs it still works 2026. 
It is still rock solid and never hangs or stops with any error messages. Sorry to say that hasnāt always been the case either for Photolab or iMatch but now finally even those are stable on my new computer and that is lovely.
Not PL (or PC or DxO) related, but thereās some evidence that people have always taken about 1 hour max to get to work (daily travel). True in Rome (on foot), Early Renaissance European cities (on foot) Later European Cities (horse drawn omnibus, then trams, then rail). True now as well. Ran across this when looking at historical city sizes. Iād guess weāve always been about as lazy as we are now.
Whether itās a question of laziness or stupidity, Iāll leave this up to you.
What makes me laugh is when people ask questions on forums or elsewhere that are blindingly obvious even to Blind Pugh. But someone taught me a good reply.
Someone says to you āI wonder how many Auckland FC players are actually Kiwis?ā
Just reply and say āI know a good site for thatā. Let them ask you what it is and then say āGet on your browser.ā When they get there, go āW W W dot G O O G L E dot comā
It works 
Iām using an AMD RX9070XT graphics card, but I canāt use GPU acceleration in the latest version of DxO PhotoLab. I uninstalled and reinstalled the graphics card driver and program, but the problem persists. How can I fix this issue?