XKCD 2501 applies in this thread.
I agree, there are so many layers of complexity in self-hosting, that most of us tend to forget, when the most basic thing would be a simple bare metal OS and Docker
you’ll probably want to upgrade the ram soon
His hardware has a max ram limit of 4, so the only probable upgrade he could do is a SATA SSD, even so I’m running around 15 docker containers on similar specs so as a starting point is totally fine.
I get your point, and know it has its merits, I would actually recommend Proxmox for a later stage when you are familiar with handling the basics of a server, and also if you have hardware that can properly handle virtualization, for OP that has a machine that is fairly old and low specs, and also is a newbie, I think fewer layers of complexity would be a better starting point to not be overwhelmed and just quit, and then in the future they can build on top of that.
I have a Dell Inspiron 1545, that has similar specs to yours running Debian with Docker and around 15 services in containers, so my recommendation would be to run Debian server (with no DE), install docker, and start from there.
I would not recommend proxmox or virtual machines to a newbie, and would instead recommend running stuff on a bare metal installation of Debian.
There are a bunch of alternatives to manage and ease the management of apps you could choose from like, yunohost, casaOS, Yacht, Cosmos Cloud, Infinite OS, cockpit, etc. that you can check out and use on top of Debian if you prefer, but I would still recommend spending time on learning how to do stuff yourself directly with Docker (using docker compose files), and you can use something like Portainer or Dockge to help you manage your containers.
My last recommendation would be that when you are testing and trying stuff, don’t put your only copy of important data on the server, in case something break you will lose it. Invest time on learning how to properly backup/sync/restore your data so you have a safety net in case that something happens, you have a way to recover.
I have no experience with this app in particular, but most of the time there is an issue like this that you can’t reach an app or any other path besides the index, is because the app itself doesn’t work well with path redirection of subfolders, meaning the app expects paths to be something like domain.tld/index.html instead of domain.tld/subfolder/index.html for all its routes.
Some apps let you add a prefix to all its routes they can work, so you not only have to configure nginx but the app itself to work with the same subfolder.
Other apps will work with the right configuration in nginx if they do a new full page load every time the page changes its path/route.
If it is a PWA that doesn’t do a page load every time the path is changed, it’s not going to work with subfolders as they don’t do any page refresh that goes through nginx, and just rewrite the visible URL on the browser
What I can recommend is to switch to a subdomain like 2fa.domain.tld instead of a subfolder and test if it works, as subdomains are the modern standard for this kind of thing these days, to avoid this type of issues.
Edit: looking at the app demo, it seems to be a vue.js PWA that doesn’t do any full page refreshes on a path change, so as stated you will probably have to switch to a subdomain to make it work.
There is an update on the RSS situation of selfh.st; TL, DR: seems to be related to ways to monetize, so now it’s available to paid subscription, but for free have to visit site to read.
Yeah, I started the same, hosting LAN parties with Minecraft and Counter Strike 1.6 servers on my own Windows machine at the time.
But what happens when you want to install some app/service that doesn’t have a native binary installer for your OS, you will not only have to learn how to configure/manage said app/service, you will also need to learn one or multiple additional layers.
I could have said “simple bare metal OS and a binary installer” and for some people it would sound as Alien, and others would be nitpicky about it as they are with me saying docker (not seeing that this terminology I used was not for a newbie but for them), If the apps you want to self-host are offered with things like Yunohost or CasaOS, that’s great, and there are apps/services that can be installed directly on your OS without much trouble, that’s also great. But there are cases where you will need to learn something extra (and for me that extra was Docker).