@Canageek I think Debian is as good a place to start as any. It seems like RHEL has lost traction since it got bought by IBM, and Debian (and derivatives) are now ascendant.
My design pattern for home server stuff has always been to run most of the services locally (literally in an old PC in my basement) but then rent a cheap $20/year VPS that comes with a stable IPv4 address (LowEndBox used to be the place to comparison shop) and then only reverse-proxy the exact services I *want* to expose to the Internet from the VPS to my #homelab.
It's a bit more work, but it means you're not directly opening your home network to the Internet, and I think the reverse-proxy and related network configuration are useful skills. Being able to set up an IPSec or #ZeroTier (#Wireguard? #Tailscale? Idk what the cool kids use today) link between two places and expose services between them has definitely come in handy regularly. (Though I have to Google my way to victory every time.)





