It was a fun experience trying to get to all work. I did originally try on my raspberrypi but I ended up just giving up on that due to the issues you mentioned. But it's nice to have my own instance, and slowly populating the all feed with new subscriptions and well I owned the domain va11halla.bar I had to use it for my name.

I can't answer them all but I'll try the ones I can as a solo/small instance

1. I don't know about suggested, but I'm someone who likes to tinker and look behind the scenes a little so that's why I made my own instance, plus being in control of everything. Also having my name @va11halla.bar is pretty cool

4. The account is gone, no migration. Part of why I made my own instance is because my old was deleted. Due to federation you can still find content you posted at least, assuming it was federated beforehand

5. You'll have to federate everything yourself if its your own instance. The all tab takes into account the subscriptions of everyone on the instance, so you'll see a lot less if you have a lot less users on your instance. The local tab takes in to account communities on that instance only.

VA-11 Hall-A! One of my favourite VN if my instance url didn't give it away. It's not too long, listen to the start telling you to get cozy and then mix drinks and change lives.

Definitely agreeing with VA-11 Hall-A (though biased). Not much in gameplay but I loved how it felt to be a mostly normal person in a world where everything else is messed up. How seemingly normal their problems are despite all the changes in the world.

Also pretty good music.