For self hosting I run a separate machine with unraid which basically makes it super simple.

As far as learning Linux its tough because there are so many different ways to do things it mostly depends on what you choose. For desktop I mostly just hit the super key and search for settings or whatever I need, I never really open the terminal except for the one time I needed to disable the thunderbolt reset when connecting my eGPU.

For self hosting its mostly learning about containers whether its podman which I think theres a flatpak in bazaar, or using distroshelf which is preinstalled. Or using a separate machine with something like proxmox, truenas, or unraid.

After that the most you do is go to the application store and tell the container where to save the config files and where to access data, maybe change a port if its already used.

After that you want to setup a VPN to your home with something like wireguard or tailscale