Hi Duncan,
The preferred way to do this is to use our desktop Linux install scripts for Ubuntu or Linux Mint with either of those as the main OS. The hotspot becomes an issue when you run things in a VM, but you can also run the installer in a VM instance as well.
- Download - linux_08_28_2020.zip
Extract that zip to /var/tmp, then run “sudo bash setup”.
If you try that and run into any issues let me know and I’ll take a look. If you specifically wanted to emulate RACHEL-Pi, it’s probably doable but would take a bit of work.
James