Scott

Is that someone’s chest hair in the background?

You 100% should.

I bought a second-hand Pixel, installed GrapheneOS the moment it arrived and never looked back.

I recently installed Curve for contactless NFC payments. Their support is terrible but, after some teething issues, it works without any problems.

Hosted on GCP?

I run the older iteration of the software. Works well.

Well, duh.

Element is UK and EU-based, not US-based.

I run a complete, self-hosted Matrix stack including bridges to WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram and Signal as well as Element Call (Livekit) and MAS (the new authentication system).

I don’t think there’s any shortcuts. You just need to install them and work through any issues, one-by-one. Start with just the homeserver (Synapse, don’t bother with anything else yet) and add one component at a time and get it working before moving to the next.

I will say that having a decent knowledge of reverse proxies, networking, DNS and certificates will help you greatly. Having a solid understanding of Docker (if you’re using Docker) would be of great benefit too.

It should be much easier today than it was five/six-odd years ago when I started; things are more polished now than they were then.

Haha. Oops. I should have checked first. Well done.

… or just publish the source on Github and let someone else continue the legacy.

They’re just hosting existing FOSS alternatives.