I literally did this yesterday and had the same thought. Older computer (8 gigs ram) with crappy windows I never used and I thought huh, I wonder how good these models can take me through installing linux with goal of docker deploys of relatively basic things like cron tasks, personal postgres, and minio that I can used for self shared data.

Took a couple hours with some things I ran across, but the model had me go through the setup for debian, how to go through the setup gui, what to check to make it server only, then it took me through commands to run so it wouldn't stop when I closed the laptop, helped with tailscale, getting the ssh keys all setup. Heck it even suggested doing daily dumps of the database and saving to minio and then removing after that. Also knows about the limitations of 8 gigs of ram and how to make sure docker settings for the difference self services I want to build don't cause issues.

Give me a month and true strong intention and ability to google and read posts and find the answer on my own and I still don't think I would have gotten to this point with the amount of trust I have in the setup.

I very much agree with this topic about self hosting coming alive because these models can walk you through everything. Self building and self hosting can really come alive. And in the future when open models are that much better and hardware costs come down (maybe, just guessing of course) we'll be able to also host our own agents on these machines we have setup already. All being able to do it ourselves.