The official rust book is great if you already know how to program in another language: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

Bare metal = not in a VM

Why are you uploading to email? Can’t you just download the torrent in the VM and check it in virustotal there?

It’s entirely possible and you do it the same way you do on bare metal. However if you are just trying to stop your ISP from seeing that you are pirating then using a VM won’t achieve anything. If you’re worried about downloading malware or something then yes that’s a good idea.

I learnt French through textbooks and then once I had a good grasp of grammar, reading French children’s literature with a dictionary. I don’t know if that’s the “best” way, but it worked.

Fwiw I mostly learnt English by just reading English books and not having a clue what was going on for a couple years but eventually got it. However I was a young child when I did that, so my ability to learn new languages was much better. I could probably do the same as an adult, but it would take me a lot longer. Don’t underestimate the brain’s ability to learn even without direct “teaching” like a textbook gives you.