Looking for a Practical Long‑Term Privacy Stack (Proton, AI, VPNs, Photos, etc.)

Raspberry Pi is one of the best options for beginners because it’s small, quite cheap and runs on low power. I would say security is more about how your system is configured rather than the hardware. For example, you would need to set-up a reverse proxy if you want external access to your website. There isn’t really a brand I would recommend because you can start with an old PC or laptop. I have a Synology NAS because I want to self-host my own media server. A NAS is something I would recommend if you know you would need more storage overtime.