Based on your OP and a few of your answers, it looks like you're struggling with setting up too many things together, when in reality some of them are meant to be a foundation and /or are required to move on to the next sparky thing in the awesome list.
You mentioned "Reverse proxy and VPN bullshit" in your OP.
Start with setting up your internal DNS (Pi-hole and Adguard are good examples that work mostly out of the box). Once you're confortable with managing internal DNS, and only then, start messing around with reverse proxy.
And like you realized a few posts up, pretty much "every" Pi-related software can be run in a regular computer. If you're not yet familiar with virtual machines, do some research on Proxmox and the likes and it will benefit you immensely.
Based on your OP and a few of your answers, it looks like you're struggling with setting up too many things together, when in reality some of them are meant to be a foundation and /or are required to move on to the next sparky thing in the awesome list.
You mentioned "Reverse proxy and VPN bullshit" in your OP. Start with setting up your internal DNS (Pi-hole and Adguard are good examples that work mostly out of the box). Once you're confortable with managing internal DNS, and only then, start messing around with reverse proxy.
And like you realized a few posts up, pretty much "every" Pi-related software can be run in a regular computer. If you're not yet familiar with virtual machines, do some research on Proxmox and the likes and it will benefit you immensely.