In terms of hardware, what are some good cost effective resources and what what things might I want to consider differently than what I am used to in both the Mac and Windows worlds? I need smart home management, a plex hub, and photo editing, as well as the usual other stuff.
EDIT: I use Capture One for photo organizing and editing. I have old computers I can repurpose for this endeavor, but they are pretty old. My main thought for this post was looking into what kind of hardware I could consider for building a new Linux system from scratch. I am very much am inclined to switch to Home Assistant,because Siri is dumb as a bag of rocks, and AppleHome does not have the features I want and is extremely buggy. Everything I have currently is in the Apple ecosystem, and my daily driver is an M2 Mac Mini. I am not inclined to put Linux on the Mac Mini at this stage. I use the complete Proton suite for all that stuff. Thanks!
My advice is to get a few live Linux ISOs and put it on a USB drive with Ventoy. I might be wrong but I think only Asahi Linux and Fedora Asahi are compatible with Apple silicon.
You’ll be able to boot into Linux with those and dip your toes in before deciding to install it and dual boot on your hard drive.
Linux is more frugal with memory, but with 8GB I’d steer away from KDE and GNOME desktop environments. Cinnamon, XFCE and LXQt will run fast.
As to the self hosting goals, I’d hold on for a while until you’re more familiar with Linux. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with too much change.