Agreed. I used pihole initially when I was first learning networking, but when I got a dedicated machine and installed OPNsense, I learned how much easier so many things can be.

i am satisfied with noip

Unbound on OPNsense ftw

I was in your position a few years ago. Went the Proxmox route. For many services, don’t make separate VMs, but instead separate LXC containers. Saves time and space.

Yeah, any time someone tells me to just read the arch wiki for something unrelated to arch I automatically know they will never provide anything valuable to humanity