theyre fairly similar as far as i can tell. they both use gnome-terminal so you wouldnt notice any difference there.

mint seems more like a windows 7 style desktop, as in its more compact and meant to be used with a keyboard and mouse. zorin is more like windows 11 where there is more space around everything, which is ideal if you are also using a touchscreen some of the time

im definitely more of a zorin fan anyway. i have it installed on 2 computers, and i have mint on an old computer that i never user, just cos

that ship is still floating and theres no containers in the water. seems good to me

if it seems daunting, which it is!, maybe it would be a good piont to ask yourself if you really need to run a server and these self hosted web apps in the first place. i did for about 10 years but i realised at some point i didnt need half of it.

if youre planning on having multiple users or want to share one of the services (like real time editing of files or passwords etc) then thats where self hosted stuff makes sense to me, but if not then syncthing can do a lot without needing any complicated setup

keepass is a good example. or note taking apps like jopin or obsidian where the data is store in plain text and where you can choose where the data is stored works great with syncthing

for about a year before i did any self hosted stuff i was running only syncthing on my laptop and phone without any server so its do-able and you can get started right now and worry about getting a server later.

tailscale is a huge help as well and is very easy to setup. say you repurpose an old laptop as a server for now and install whatever services on it, jellyfin for example, you will only be able to access that when you are on your home network but not when you are away, and thats where tailscale comes in. as long as its installed on each device you should be able to connect to your apps/services from anywhere.

basically you can start small and then over the coming months and years as you learn more you will get more confident about moving onto more complicated setups

they really had to pick the same name as a popular tv show? this isnt going to be confusing at all. why not just go with dark mirror or something similar?

that button placement looks pretty bad. the 3 switches are right where you would be grabbing the phone. the power button looks like its on the opposite side to the volume button so when you go to change the volume (with one hand) youre likely to press the power button by accident.

my computer is really slow. where can i download more rams?

the phone part would the tricky bit. i think it should be doable using Termux on Android to run it. Termux has a “boot” plugin that should start Radicale every time the phone is turned on, but whether it will run reliably is another question.

Syncthing runs a discovery server that helps nodes/devices find each other when you are away from your home network, so it should still sync in most cases. on some routers, if it cant get around the NAT then files will be synced using Syncthing’s relay server, but you have the option to turn both of those off if you want either

ive been going back to basics the last few years after years of messing around with self hosted stuff for a while. i just like the simplicity of the files being local and not worrying about logins or needing to be iconnected to my home network or needing remote access etc.

plain text markdown files for note taking. keepass for passwords, which is just a single file. instead of using jellyfin to watch movies i usually just open a file browser. m3u playlists for listening to music with mpv. then syncthing for syncing all that between devices.

something i want to do soon is to run Radicale/calDAV locally on each device and then have syncthing sync the changes instead of needing every device to talk to a central calDAV server. DecSync is another option for this kind of thing i think

for bookmark syncing im currently using Floccus with the webDAV server thats running on my synology, but i would like get that webDAV server running locally with syncthing at some point as well

mainly if its something that i use daily i want to try and get the files to always be stored locally, then other things that i might only use 2 or 3 times i week i dont mind doing self hosted stuff