We run one for our product and it’s been teetering on the edge of extinction for a while. Google keeps saying they’re going to kill them and going back on the decision

Fair enough. Every service I run depends on encrypted data, so starting the machine without decrypting isn’t worthwhile in my case. I have to decrypt to get everything back up after power loss anyway.

Main advantages I’m aware of for full disc encryption are encrypted swap and system config. Overkill for some use cases so YMMV, but wanting to point out that decrypting at boot can be done.

I may be missing something in your use case. As long as you have the port forwarded you can decrypt from anywhere. Use pub key auth and you’re good to go

You can decrypt via ssh at boot. I used dropbear to accomplish that on my machine

I recently switched from Joplin to Obsidian for different reasons. I’d prefer something FOSS, but so far I’ve been happy with the transition. Since it works with plain markdown files, it would fit your use case