On a completely unrelated note, I had a first glance at the thumbnail of this article and I was convinced the photo was taken in real life until I noticed the ‘cybernetic seam’ on the subject’s face. I almost couldn’t recognise this as an in-game screenshot and I already consider myself adept in recognising such images.

Wait, is an old laptop also good enough for setting up a home server? I thought you would require a completely separated and dedicated PC box like the ones you can see in studios or offices. That’s new to me!

That is a great analogy of explaining the broadness of the concept of self hosting that I wasnt able to understand from the other comments.

As a beginner, I would like to start out with a storage provider like Google Drive (& Google Photos). I currently don’t have any hardware for a home server but I can get one as per my requirements.

The biggest issue for me would be the OS running in the home server. I would preferably want something compatible with Windows since I have worked with Windows for my whole life. I am also fine with working with Linux, however I don’t want to spend weeks banging my head on setting up and using Linux before I even start configuring it for my home server. I will be able to handle learning about networkings of the server on the go and troubleshoot problems as long as the OS does not bother me. As with self hosting, I am a beginner in the field of Linux so I don’t know what ‘distro’ would be best for me for this purpose, but nonetheless I will research more about it thanks to your headstart.