If for personal access only, ZeroTier might solve your use case.
DetachablePianist
I can't answer for Mint specifically, but I'm running kubuntu on a similar 2012 MacBook Pro and it runs great for just an old i5 (16 GB ram with an SSD really helps a lot). More importantly, all the Apple hardware is fully supported, right down to the keyboard & screen brightness buttons, volume buttons, etc. Runs way better than macOS ever did.
Thanks for your service! I've been trying out Thunder and I'm generally happy with it so far.
To be fair, the average movie has been pretty awful for quite some time now.
You can use a tool like Handbrake or ffmpeg to burn titles directly into your videos, but you'd have to re-encode the files. Perhaps not what you actually have in mind?
In Ghostbusters 2 they rigged up a Nintendo joystick to drive the statue of liberty through the streets of NYC. Does that count?
You might try ZeroTier. You'll each need a tiny client app, but its super easy to install and setup, and extremely secure. Free to use with up to 25 devices.
This answer isn't getting enough upvotes
Yeah, they provide a "Flow" section where you can setup firewall-like rules to control your flow of traffic. You can configure rules that say, allow ssh to a specific server, but only from a specified devices, while allowing ssh, https and smb to another server from any device, blocking all other TCP traffic. UDP is a little weirder to control, but there's a decent tutorial with example configs.
I hear about TailScale a lot, and I know its super popular in the self-hosting & linux communities. I haven't used it myself though, so can't offer a comparison vs ZeroTier. I found ZeroTier refreshjngly easy to use and install on client devices, so haven't had reason to look elsewhere yet.
Anyway, have fun with your endeavor!
I still prefer 'Xitter'