I’m not in IT and had no prior experience.
I bought a used Dell Optiplex for cheap and used installation guides provided on the websites of the services I wanted to install (pihole, jellyfin, home assistant etc)
This is by far the easiest method to get started. Learn by doing.
Make all your services LAN only to start; don’t open anything up to be accessed outside your home network until you know a bit more, as making it secure requires a bit more time and knowledge.
Hot tip: use chat gpt to help you. If something doesnt work, feed the error messages to it and it will explain why and give you the commands to fix them.
I think we both understand the intention behind my statement