Not being an expert it seems as though your setup is windows-centric, whereas KVM tends to shine on linux.

Or headscale.

Dozens… yt channels, tech blogs, changelogs, etc

I use a cryptomator mount and sync that to whichever cloud i want, but the un/mounting is manual.
If you need full disk encryption look at ZFS and snapshots.
Do you need to backup everything on the disk?

VPN: Headscale is an open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server, which itself uses WireGuard under the hood.

For the file share, i’d say separate into two groups/VMs probably.
Whatever you might want to self-host publicly (are you sure?) keep it isolated. Its own VLAN, IP/host/subnet, container, VM heck its own hardware if possible. Or use a VPS and only self-host your private stuff in your LAN.

For what you should host: that’s up to you. I’ve heard jellyfin’s used a lot for media stuff.

Uses sqlite as repo backend

And it’s used by the SQLite project.

GitHub is a company owned by Microsoft (in the USA). They allow you to host git repositories there (a git forge) and they use your code to train their AI.

GitLab is another git forge, you can also host your code there. I think it was also bought off.

Forgejo is git forge software. If you want to use a git forge that relies on Forgejo, checkout CodeBerg (based in Germany). Forgejo is a fork of Gitea, which is a fork of Gogs.

<rant> All of these tend to offer not only a git forge but also other crap like tickets and CI/CD in what i personally see as feature creep. </rant>

Gentoo’s my daily driver.

Ubuntu or one of its variants

Even Mint? Seems to be the go-to recommendation for newbies.

Linux From Scratch or Slackware too.

OK

Atm main sys is a ZFS RAIDZ1 on 3 SSDs
Weekly-ish backup onto 1TB external HDD.
Sync encrypted important stuff to Cloud.
Syncthing some stuff to smartphone.

Which old Thinkpad handles all of that?

freenginx

You can all put your money where your mouth is: https://donate.codeberg.org/

I get your point and generally agree but it’s not a non-issue.
I think the general gist is that if you don’t react to words, actions will follow.
And, historically, the pen has always been mightier than the sword.

https://donate.codeberg.org/

You might be better off with bare-metal linux and shoving windows inside a VM where it belongs.

the only feature I look in monitors these days

Not being smart.

is there a future where this isn’t the case? And what would be required to get there?

Hardware manufacturers of companies in a position of power who leverage it. Like Valve.

Are we just waiting for them to give a shit?

Speak with your money. They won’t care though, the linux market is minimal.