other than hardware (close to anything you got lying around + dirt cheap used 3.5" drives) I don’t see what the expensive part is. granted, if you follow the youtubers with their specialized builds with $400 motherboards and virtualize this and kubernette that, sure, that’s gonna cost you. but if you disable transcoding on the server and store standard 1080p h264/x265 files that practically anything can play, a humble 10+ year old PC will do just fine.

start small - you already have a PC of some sort, run jellyfin server on with a couple of movies and shows and make it work. once it works within your household, look into accessing it from the outside. once that works, add an user or two.

once you make all of that work then you can look at drawing up optimal specs and setting up a separate box and whatnot.

the lina thing is an alter ego of the dude that quit already so this is made up bullshit, chill out with the apple-men-in-black scenarios.

linode is super-expensive, so it isn’t that hard to be cheaper. we had to use hostinger for a while (< 10 instances concurrently) and I didn’t like it. also I think they want you to prepay for the year which is a major turnoff. they use an inferior virtualization system, forgot which, and there were issues with availability. this was all about two years ago, no idea about their current offering and state, but I remember being glad to be rid of them.

I don’t see how them two things are related, my email has nothing to do with my chattings. it also doesn’t explain why it’s needed as it supposedly acts like a aggregator for the different protocols. upon signing up with a throwaway, it reveals itself as a matrix client and all them chat bridges are hosted by them. I have no idea as to their reputability, credibility, and longevity and at this point this is way too many things I need to get to the bottom of in order to consider it, so I’ll check back in a year or two and see how it’s holding up.

first time I heard of it. why is it that, the knees? looks like a trillian type-of-thing. wants my email. only appimage available. oh it’s electron crap. website isn’t great, the copy is super-amateur hour. it got acquired by the wordpress lunatic. I mean, OK, but doesn’t look very promising.

switched my server from i7-870 (my ex-workstation) to Pentium G6405 (got it free). switch went without a hitch, debian with a ton of docker services (jellyfin, servarr, pihole, radicale, etc.), 8 GB RAM only. although it’s a quadcore to dualcore switch, no performance issues. I know there are better options out there, but I don’t spend money unless I really have to.

jellyfin with OPDS plugin. you can download books directly from any OPDS compatible reader (Koreader, Moonreader+, etc)

zero problems with docker, maybe try that.

docker?

before you take the jump, consider a way lighter and easier alternative - syncthing (files) and radicale (calendar, contacts). dependable, bullet-proof, super-lightweight, zero issues - everything nextcloud isn’t.

I was the happiest when I finally booted nextcloud off my network, never to return.

there are no good linux tablets, for any price; by “good” I mean it works as good as an Android or iOS tablet. everything is from not-as-good to way worse and there are things that are downright unusable.

whichever platform you choose (Gnome, Plasma or any of the derivatives like Phosh, Plasma Mobile, etc.) the experience beyond the first 15 minutes (hey, this actually works!) is pretty bad. it’s certainly not usable as a main device that you depend on and use for actual work; as a dicking-around kinda project, sure, have at it.

before you spend that kind of money, my recommendation is to get an older Surface Pro or Dell Latitude 2-in-1 in the $150-200 range and see if that functionality is something you can live with. those can be had with up to 16 GB on-board and the SSDs are replaceable (Dells are more serviceable). kernel support is spotty, not all of the features work for all devices, mainly cameras and such; consult the linux-surface github.

edit: just saw this comment, my experiences are similar. the rest of the comments where people think what a device might work like you should disregard.