Keeping hardware running 24/7 cheaply is difficult. Expanding an existing setup is expensive. Consumer grade ISP’s will block unexpected network protocols sometimes seemingly for no reason. Dynamic DNS isn’t super robust, so several times I went on vacation and the DNS service would flake. Maybe it’s better if you pay more for it, but I have no complaints about my VPS. It’s nice to be able to just reliably reach my web stuff and not worry a cat bumped the power cable.

It is possible to use a dynamic DNS service. They’re typically pretty cheap. I did for several years. It kind of sucked so I rented a VPS.

https://vegastack.com/tutorials/how-to-install-lxde-on-ubuntu-22-04/ This is the guide I was using, if it helps. I’d take a look at section 1, step 2, where it shows the picture of the “Configure LightDM” menu. I think it’s probably not too bad, but I’d be curious to hear how it goes.

I haven’t used Ubuntu in a bit, but I’m decently familiar with linux overall. Looked up a guide. It indicated you could install LXDE with sudo apt install lxde and then reboot. The guide said that LXDE should be the default Desktop Environment now, because it’s the most recently installed one. If for whatever reason LXDE isn’t the new default, on the Login screen, in the upper left corner there should be a dialogue box to select whichever Desktop Environment you want as the new default.

This might be a stupid question, but I’m only so-so at wireguard. Do you experience that kind of loss using WG at home, on wifi, between your phone and server?