Ubuntu’s “reputation” is nonsense. It’s a great distro for servers. Security updates are really fast and using snaps in a server environment is really great. I recommend running things like Docker or Tailscale off snap. They will revert to a previous image if an update fails. Extra stability for a server as you run automatic updates. If you run everything that is not in the base install off a snap, you have an extra layer of sandboxing against any supply chain attack for dependencies.

Ubuntu will have more recent packages, that doesnt really matter in a server environment. Debian is otherwise fine, I just dislike it’s installer and prefer Ubuntu’s. I found it easier to sync third party drivers on Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Pro gets you livepatches for kernal issues, which may be worthwhile. Also done without rebooting.

Ubuntu also gives you better apparmour default profiles on more things, whereas on debian, its up to you to set them up.

Debian will be exactly the same, its just more conservative and has less of those extras I mentioned. May be marginally lighter on resources for that. Either are fine.

Oh, Simplefin does that. Really solid.

It’ll be down to your bank’s rules. My main bank and brokerage work flawlessly, sync everyday. My secondary bank and Amex need to be reauthenticated every week or two. So I just update those once a month. Just go on simplefin and run the 2FA plus some waiting.

It doesn’t sync non-bank stuff, so there’s some RRSP providers I just enter manually.

For $20 cad a year its fine. I wouldn’t use it to track daily expenses unless you know everything will work. I do all my finances once a month so its fine for me.

I didn’t expect to even need a NAS, but I can no longer live without two now. Having all my data in one place, automated backups on my secondary NAS. I found a cloud storage provider I like. Just the whole stack is wonderful and I’m never going back.

GoCardless or Enable Banking don’t work? I see both on the Actual Budget website. One doesnt take new customers? Weird

I was using Wealthica before they started charging and Actual Budget + Simplefin is so much better. I’m really happy all my financial info is just mine and not exposed to any other company. The expense for Simplefin is worth it and minimal.

We should celebrate these kinds of changes. Like its great that they’ve already achieved so much and not just that, but left behind a group of folks just as committed in the future of the project.

I always feel that posterity of your work beyond your own contribution is the real achievement and a sign of humility.