But ultimately, it turns out I like interesting technical problems, learning things, and buying stuff I don’t need off the internet - more than chatting to people I don’t know.

This is exactly why I’ve never taken a legitimate look into the hobby.

received images directly from the amateur station on the ISS

This concept makes sense but I always assumed ham radio was just about audio. That’s pretty cool

So now I’m more into Linux and self-hosting

You probably know about this already but just in case, since you have an interest in radio and you have experience with antennas, you might have a cool project that could benefit from LoRa. There’s a few open source projects that incorporate the tech to make sensors for crops or messaging friends at festivals when cell towers are overloaded