If there is docker image for what you need, use docker image.

If not I would recommend systemd-nspawn, it’s chroot but can run systemd init, with efforts you can run GUI applications from it too., wiping that is just sudo rm -rf.

Some video players can open .mpls files (usually found under PLAYLIST folder), if your video player supports that you probably can see chapters.

I am using ZSH, that function that allows you to type part of the command and then do UP key to find previous command starts with same prefix is killer function for me.

(I don’t know if this function is added by oh-my-zsh or not.)

On Ubuntu 22.04 based distro, you can try install HWE (hardware enablement) kernels but you need a phone that can share WIFI/mobile connection through USB cable.

sudo apt update; sudo apt install linux-generic-hwe-22.04

Try posting output of lspci command here, gives us more information about your laptop hardware.

Mkvtoolnix for converting bdmv folder to mkvtoolnix without re-encoding.

Deep packet inspection is a thing, AFAIK people in China uses a software called v2ray to counter that.

I currently have Pulsed Media seedbox, which has SSH access (no root) and docker, haven’t tried something like plex/jelyfin so I can’t tell how well it works.

• You should google the name if you want to try them, negative things pops up.

• Password authentication can’t be turned off for SSH.

some sort of dashboard with monitoring and statuses of all my services

See if Uptime Kuma suits your needs.

Are there any major no-no things a newbie might do with Docker/selfhosting that I should avoid?

Allow password based SSH authentication, you should look into key based authentication

I wanted to have it behind a domain, how would I achieve it?

Use a reverse proxy (like caddy) which serves different content based on domain name.

Stats from my seedbox (all public torrents)

Uploaded: 638.311 TiB

Downloaded: 29.120 TiB

Ratio: 21.91

Which announced removal of port forwarding.

https://www.ivpn.net/knowledgebase/general/do-you-support-port-forwarding/

I setup syncthing from seedbox to my NAS.

https://netboot.xyz/

You might not need it but it’s a very small image (3.5MB for multi-arch iso) so why not?

Official wiki page that lists AP with Wifi AX support

(Some devices that lists “Snapshot” might be supported by 23.05 currently in release candidate phase)

If I remember correctly you can plug in phone line to RJ45, this stackovwerflow question lists some caveats.

I setup Swapspace in case I ever need to compile something very big, but usually my system doesn’t use swap.

Serverhunter is a search engine for cloud servers and has easy to use filter functions.

I am surprised that I didn’t see anyone link to https://lowendtalk.com/ and https://lowendspirit.com/, OP can ask in both places and see what people have for offer.

Personally tried gluetun + AirVPN and having success.

I choose AirVPN mainly because I am cheap person, it give me port forwarding and IPv6 connectivity. (To use IPv6 with gluetun requires some tweaking)

If you use WSL, there is no normal Desktop Linux experience, you need to use something like Virtualbox.

Gigabyte GB-BNIP-N200

MSI Cubi N ADL

Beelink EQ12

I’ve saw some good news about Intel’s N95/100/200/305 CPUs, N200 is said to have similar performance as I5-7400 at 6W TDP.