People have been setting up servers since they've had internet connections, it's only the last few years that people started calling everything "the cloud" and

People have been setting up servers since they've had internet connections, it's only the last few years that people started calling everything "the cloud" and acting like having a physical server on the internet is difficult or strange. I don't know what old laptops and PIs have to do with anything though, one $600 desktop is going to dwarf all of them combined in performance. There is no reason for anyone to do that unless they are a kid with only an allowance for income.