I'm where I'm today because of my love for Linux. In the 90s my go to distribution was Slackware. I had it spread across several dozens of floppy disks.
Knowing how to keep your server running and understanding internals is a great skill, but that doesn't mean that progress should stop.
Standalone servers are great, but this greatness comes at a price. It takes time to maintain server, it takes time to configure additional services. But at the same time they bring you joy (and frustrations) and much more knowledge and deeper understanding of what goes under the hood.
Knowing how to keep your server running and understanding internals is a great skill, but that doesn't mean that progress should stop.
Standalone servers are great, but this greatness comes at a price. It takes time to maintain server, it takes time to configure additional services. But at the same time they bring you joy (and frustrations) and much more knowledge and deeper understanding of what goes under the hood.