Tons of great tips in this thread already.

For cheap virtual machines/virtual private servers there’s options beyond the $5/ish a month at Digital Ocean/Vultr:

* many of them offer starting credits for new accounts * lowendbox often has offers for VMs as cheap as $20 a year * Scaleway Stardust is super cheap as well. The web interface never shows them in stock, but I have always been able to create them via their CLI tool.

What will definitely help is look for a community (there’s multiple great subreddits that are welcoming to beginners). Don’t be afraid to ask questions, even if they may sound obvious. That’s the best way to learn!

Good luck, and enjoy!