Oracle has an always free tier which provides two x64 AMD based virtual machines. They are more or less cloud based calculators in terms of performance, but out of experience I can tell you it is more than sufficient for a few docker containers.
European locations are available.
Little Snitch is a application based firewall for outgoing connections. It is not mainly an Adblock of any sorts. It may be used that way with filter lists, but that is in no way it’s primary goal or purpose.
My main point was that you don’t have to use it for blocking the other traffic, because Linux systems won’t have unwanted traffic to begin with, since you have full control over it.
That is kinda naive, and absolutely depending on what software you install and use. Thinking „there can be no unwanted traffic on my system, as I use Linux and am in full control“ means you either have VERY high faith no application on Linux calls home ever, or vastly overconfidence in yourself and your system. If there was absolutely no use in applications like little snitch, things like OpenSnitch or Portmaster would not exist for Linux either.
He set himself up for failure again with PopOS.
Cachy and Bazzite are much better choices by the other team members.
Well, not every system can handle or support multiple VPN connections with different providers, or the VPNs could interfere with each other. E.g. when using Tailscale you can not use another WireGuard based VPN according to their FAQs.
Also, it adds complexity to the stack and system as a whole on the client side. That is all fine and dandy as long as it works, but quickly a pain in the butt once you have to debug something.
Cloudflare Tunnels work great and are really easy to setup. Plus you are not exposing you machine completely to the outside, as the cloudflared service/container „calls out“, and Cloudflare is your reverse proxy. Downside is, you’re binding yourself to one of the US hyperscalers.
Pangolin uses the same principle, but is a bit more challenging to setup. Plus you need some kind of cloud server to make it work.
As you already have a VPN active at all times (at least it sounds like that), a VPN home seems out of the picture.
Unless you have a dedicated firewall at home, maybe reconsider the reverse proxy route. Personally would not feel comfortable with exposing a machine at home to the internet in full without a handle on what it can do or how it may be reached.
One of my two machines crashed a lot until I moved two Containers to my local server. They are quite small in regards to RAM and at their limit quite fast. Maybe check that.
Also I read somewhere that you could enter credit card details and this kinda upgrades your account in their system though you still do not pay. Something to do with throttling free machines in favor of paid customers.