Is there room here to ask about software? I've been interested lately about getting into hosting my own server for multiple things. It'd be nice to be able to access it remotely for files for work, as a media server locally and remotely, and to access my Stable Diffusion instance remotely. I suppose those all require different solutions right? I'd love to know more!

I suppose I would choose Darcs & Pijul for version control systems to bit into Git hegemony (& if you prefer Git hegemony, don’t use proprietary code forges).

Additionally just the general vibes of IRC & XMPP for battle-tested chat applications that are lightweight for clients & servers alike. These are the kinds of tools your next community should be built on if you want to minimize resource usage (data plans, storage capacity, battery, CPU churn).