You could keep the kernel tho while changing the gui

I’m just using basic fabric stuff running through a systemd service for my MC server. It also basically just has every single performance mod I could find and nothing else (as well as geyser+floodgate) so there isn’t all that much admin stuff to do. I set up RCON (I think it’s called) to send commands from my computer but I just set up everything through ssh. I haven’t heard of either pterodactyl or crafty controller, I’ll check those out!

for high vram ai stuff it might be worth waiting and seeing how the 24gb b580 variant is

Intel has a bunch of translation layer sort of stuff though that I think generally makes it easy to run most CUDA ai things on it, but I’m not sure if common ai software supports multi gpu with it though

IDK how cash limited you are but if it’s just the vram you need and not necessarily the tokens/sec it should be a much better deal when it releases

Not entirely related but I have a full half hourly shapshotted computer backup going to a large HDD in my home server using Kopia, its very convenient and you don’t need to install anything on the server except a large drive and the ability to use ssh/sftp (or another method, it supports several). It supports many compression formats and also avoids storing duplicate data. I haven’t needed to use it yet, but I imagine it could become very useful in the future. I also have the same set up in the cli on the server, largely so I can roll back in case some random person happens upon it and decides to destroy everything in my Minecraft server (which is public and doesn’t have a whitelist…). It’s pretty easy to set up and since it can back up over the internet, its something you could easily use for a whole family.

My home server (with a bunch of used parts plus a computer from the local university surplus store) was probably about ~170$ in total (i7 6700, 16gb ddr4, 256gb ssd, 8tb hdd) and is enough to host all of the stuff I have (very light modded MC with geyser, a gitlab instance, and the backup) very easily, but it is very much not expandable (the case is quite literally tiny and I don’t have space to leave it open, I could get a pcie storage controller but the psu is weak and there aren’t many sata ports), probably not all that future proof either, and definitely isn’t something I would trust to perform well with AI models.

this (sold out now) is the hdd I got, I did a lot of research and they’re supposed to be super reliable. I was worried about noise, but after getting one I can say that as long as it isn’t within 4 feet of you you’ll probably never hear it.

Anyways, it’s always nice to really do something the proper way and have something fully future proof, but if you just need to host a few light things you can probably cheap out on the hardware and still get a great experience. It’s worth noting that a normal Minecraft server, backups, and a document editor for example are all things that you can run on a Raspberry Pi if you really wanted to. I have absolutely no experience using a NAS, metasearch, or heavy mods however, those might be a lot harder to get fast for all I know.