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.

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.

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.

I think thunderbird always delay major version upgrade until <version>.2.

If you observe their changelog:

115.0: only offer binary download, not as upgrade

102.0: only offer binary download, not as upgrade

102.1.2: only offer binary download, not as upgrade

102.2: no such disclaimer

They also has the same disclaimer for 91.x, that’s how Thunderbird decided to distribute update.

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 know Micron Storage Executive can run in Ubuntu Live USB, too bad Micron/Crucial doesn’t have attractive offering where I live.

Ubuntu freezes package version number (with only few exceptions like browsers) when they release a new version.

You will either need to wait for a new version (most likely 23.10) or use 3rd party maintained PPAs.

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.

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.

If you mean automatically update IP part, duckdns website has a very comprehensive guide.

If you mean getting a free SSL certificate, you can use acme.sh (this is what I used) which has integrated support for duckddns (To use let’s encrypt you need to use --server letsencrypt in your command)

You probably need to do this with a live system (not using a system that is on the partition you want to rename)

I tried port scanning part on 127.0.0.1, there was no output until I supplied -v.

Command I used with success: nc -z 127.0.0.1 1-65535 -v 2>&1 | grep succeeded

Edit: I installed openbsd version of netcat

I have a TP-Link HS300 that connects to a AP running openwrt, at any moment I can wireguard to AP and use Kasa APP to turn on/off any machine (not the AP though).

There is a Python package for kasa so one can use openwrt machine to detect if machine is down and automatically switch on and off if needed.

Try GParted live iso image.