To add a couple of issues with Dynamic Libraries, and why someone would choose Static Libraries:

• The dynamic library being updated can break a program due to a change in the library. Think a math call goes from divide(a,b) to divide(a,b, precision), so now the old call doesn’t exist.
• Some languages don’t have a “stable” way to talk to itself. This means that if you have a program and library compiled with compiler version A, then later compile an update to the library with compiler version B, the program won’t know how to talk to the library correctly, even though the call is still there.

Like a lot of things, there are tradeoffs, and there is no universal correct choice.

Yes, another great solution.

A lot of people recommend Docker, but I will go further and say to specifically use Docker compose.

That way all the configuration is in a file that you can backup/restore. Updating is really easy, and you will never forget one of the random flags you need to set.

• PiHole - you can use the custom DNS to route domain names to you npm
• npm (Nginx proxy manager) - allows easy access to all your services hosted on one box

I’ve been using Void Linux for my home server for a few years now. It uses runit instead of OpenRC, and I haven’t had any problems with it. I would recommend the glibc version over the musl version.

Got 1 VM using KVM (Home Assistant), about a dozen docker containers, and a couple of services running on their own.

I feel like that is what snaps are for, long running server applications.