Happy to help, man.

You don’t need a Static IP address for Tailscale. Just the Edge Router setup I was mentioning. Dyndns has been my go to for years if you do need one.

Samba is a great option. I’ve heard people say it’s a pain to configure it for Max or Linux machines, but I think I had to click 6-7 things and it just worked. Lol.

Have you tried just using a fileshare if it’s just your other devices? You can VPN into a cheap Edge Router Lite and be able to access it remotely. I think you’ll need a Dynamic DNS subscription for most residential locations. Your ISP may let you set a static one. May.

You’d need to secure the VPN, but it is a pretty solid setup. You can even get the Edge Router to act as a firewall or split up the network so you can only VPN into a specific segment of your network. It sounds complicated, but it’s not too bad. A whole lot of I can guide you through it if that’s what you want.

Tailscale may be easier from a setup perspective. I’ve never done a deep dive into the company and I’m more of a “do it myself” kinda guy, but I did like it when I tried it out for a while. It was definitely easy and effective. There’s also HeadScale and NetMaker, but I don’t have personal experience I can speak from on either. I wouldn’t mind learning if you want to try it.

Are you just looking to share files or swap to Linux? If it’s just Linux you can dip your toes in the water first: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

That method does not get you a GUI though. You will be using the terminal. I recommend pairing it with MobaXTerm, an enhanced terminal, as Moba presents the file system in a windows like way. It’s great for learning and you don’t have to have the paid version, though it is a perpetual license.

I’d always recommend Ubuntu for beginners. It’s not necessary the easiest, but it’s pretty simple and where you’d struggle prepares you well for other Linux Distributions, or distros. It often comes with a windows like GUI.

There’s also an option to “Try Ubuntu” by running it off a USB. It won’t persist, or remember anything, between reboots, but that can be an advantage. I personally carry a drive with my own Live USB on my keychain.

When you’re ready you can try setting up Dual Boot, where you choose to enter Windows or Linux on startup or jump in all the way.

You can run Linux off an old laptop, a raspberry/orange/banana pi or build something dedicated. I’m happy to help with any of them.

It’s not impractical. It requires effort and Americans are too busy watching Netflix and spanking the monkey to do much of anything.

I work in tech and I promise it’s not. I worked my way through support and engineering and then did development. I promise people aren’t as bad at tech as they appear to you. The only thing stopping people is laziness.

It is practically possible. You just have to put in a small amount of effort. Anyone saying it’s too hard has given up without trying.

Sr Architect. Lol.

It’s not hard and there’s plenty of people, like myself, that are willing to help you. Let’s work together.

I’m not asking you to. Those are rhetorical. You either pay for them and are wrong about your costs or you don’t pay for them and you’re a hack, your software is a joke, and you don’t belong in tech.

You’re either lying or not knowledgeable on the topic enough to have an informed opinion.

You don’t pay for electricity or pay a fee for using the data center? You don’t pay an engineer to do maintenance? You don’t pay for your own alerting system? You don’t pay for the network security tools? You don’t pay for your subscription to Docker Hub? You don’t pay for a second physical location you can swap to in an incident?

I do these migrations for a living. I know you’re a liar. Cloud beats on prem everytime. You simply cannot compete with their economy of scale.

If you’re doing actual big compute its cheaper in the cloud. Considerably. It’s also very easy and cheap to store lots of data. You will never be able to compete with their price for storage so I have no idea why you think that would be true.

I’ve done the on prem design. I’ve migrated people entirely to the cloud. I specialize a little in between.

Without any shred of doubt the cloud is going to be more cost effective than self hosting for 99% of all use cases. They’re priced that way intentionally. You cannot compete with Cloudflare/AWS/GCP/Vultr/Akami/Digital Ocean/etc.

My homelab isn’t about scaling, production workloads and definitely isn’t accessible to anyone but me. I’d argue using it in any other way defeats the purpose and shows a lack of understanding.

That’s not the point. Its unprofessional. Someone is going to smash and grab OPs idea and actually have the skills to host it properly. Probably at a fraction of the cost because OP doesn’t understand that hosting SaaS products out of his house isn’t professional or effective.

Also; cloud is cheaper than self hosting at any small amount of scale. This wouldn’t cost much to run in AWS if built properly. The people who struggle with AWS costs are not professionals and have no business hosting anything.

SLAs?

You’re going to need a redundant ISP and a generator. You’ve left the territory where it’s economical to self host something if that’s what you’re looking at. You still have several other single points of failure.

And I’ll be honest, your setup isn’t ready for an SLA either. Just having a second machine is such a small part of what you need to do before doing any guarantees. Are you using a Dynamic DNS service? What’s the networking setup look like? Router to Compute?

From the sounds of it, you’re not a professional. It might be time to engage an expert if you want to grow this.