I host a non-federated instance for use within a large group for chat/voice/video. It's very convenient and private.

Things I rely on are Nextcloud, Jellyfin, Wireguard, and Matrix-Synapse.

Yup, as is also evidenced by this part: "What about all of the distros unrelated to Ubuntu? You've got the well-known names like Debian..."

I wish I could give this more than one upvote...

I had a very positive experience flashing and setting up a Linksys E8450 with OpenWRT recently.

Nextcloud, Synapse, and Jellyfin here.