Yes you can access Windows shares directly and play the media from there with no issues. I do it all the time.

I have a newer Zenbook and can confirm when I first got it, and wiped windows to put Ubuntu on it, audio didn’t work from the speakers. Headphones worked just fine. There’s a blog from some Asus dev community documenting the issues and resolution. I’m on mobile right now and can’t find it. I can confirm it was addressed on Fedora a few kernel releases back though and that all is well. I’ll post the blog link shortly. Per post above please provide your model number.

Edit: typos

I have all that functionality today with FF… Not sure when you last checked, but if you create a Mozilla account and log in to FF you can sync all the same stuff as Chrome does.

+1 Put it in a USB3 device and you’ve got a smoking fast boot setup for as many OSs as you can shake a stick at. Great tool.

Bingo