@dirchansky I was honestly pretty nervous, but managed to set it up using the official guide and using AI for questions about the setup when I got a bunch of error messages.

I've never handled VMs, terminal, or linux before but it took me a few hours to get everything fixed and working.

I've seen GoToSocial, Snac, and Akkoma mentioned as some pretty lightweight instances to self-host, but I ultimately went with Hollo because of how it thoroughly sticks to mastodon API, which means you can use most apps meant for mastodon.

I just found it randomly while looking up what people were saying about single user fediverse instances, and I liked the design 🤣. So far so good, but I'll definitely mention it if I run into any issues.