General Computer/Technology Thread

So, playing around with my computers and finally getting a laptop that I bought to convert to linux working after over a year ago (secureboot was my problem, stupidly easy to fix by setting an admin password in the bios and disabling it) rekindled my interest in computers in general beyond “okay, this runs and that runs, whoop-dee-doo”. So, I figured I’d poke around and as it turns out, we don’t have a general technology/computing thread. Or we didn’t anyway.

Anyway, I figured I’d type this up and give people a place to gather and talk about computers and technology. As a start, I’m considering going out in a couple months and buying a small server for myself so that I can use it as a personal/home cloud because to be completely honest I hate the idea that my data is off in someone else’s lala land where they can cut off my access in an instant as I’ve seen google do a couple times to other people (I don’t use cloud storage at the moment, so that’s never happened to me), but I really like the idea of convenience behind it, especially now that my laptop is windows free and fully operational meaning I can work on the go again if I want to. So, as a dedicated plotbunny rancher I’d love it if I had a way to pop onto my laptop and pull my up-to-date stories up onto my screen out of thin air rather than having to do a constant back and forth with flash drives and portable hard drives between one rig and the other as I’ve done in the past. It’s messy and inconvenient.

To that end, I’m kind of wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to what sort of server to pick up (since I really don’t need another computer laying around, taking up space at the moment when there are things literally dedicated to what I want to do) as well as a good way of going about setting up said cloud. PlexPass is seriously tempting, except that I don’t have an abundance of movies, videos or music at the moment, so even five bucks for a month would be wasted on it given that I barely use the streaming accounts that I already have via Prime and Hulu as it is. Mostly what I’m looking do do is to make my own, personal, dedicated version of DropBox so that I can have access to my files remotely where and when I need them without having to share server space with anyone except maybe my family.

Thoughts or advice?