IT worker, close to 50 years old, only ever could afford low-mid range tech, gamer. Been using windows for over 30 years and linux for 8. Linux works better than windows and it allowed me to improve my tech skills beyond a desktop machine.

This is how I started.
I have a dynamic IP and a router provided by my ISP. IP assignations, DHCP, are managed by the router. I went with DuckDNS for a free DNS service. Select a name and you get a myname.duckdns.org that you need to assign to your dynamic IP. duckdns has instructions to create a cronjob to update your dynamic IP on duckdns.org. (Routers come in all shapes and configs, chances are that this won’t work for most people) On the router, I assigned a static IP to the server hosting Jellyfin, in case of a reboot Jellyfin would always have the same IP. On the Ports page I opened up the default port for Jellyfin at that IP. I could then access Jellyfin outside of my local network using myname.duckdns.org:1234
This is not what I have right now, but it helped my get started.

Firefox has a “reader” mode and it may not work for all sites but on this one it allows you to read the whole text

Don’t uninstall it before you’ve tested cosmic. Just select the Desktop you want to login with, make it default. When you’re comfortable with it, you can think about removing Plasma.

Many have already mentioned tools that I also use and appreciate immensely.
My pick is Steam. I’ve picked up on gaming in the past 2 years and it’s very stable right now. Every game that I have interest in just works, I can install games, including early access or demos without looking at the compatibility or the release date. The download speeds of games are high (imho at least where I’m located, and compared with a PS5). My partner is a heavy gamer and has to yet find a game that doesn’t work on her machine.

My small selfhosted system appreciates this very much. Having Debian as my base OS makes everything easier.