[andialo]

apt install nginx will set the users for you and it also starts automatically on start, ssh default config is perfectly fine, keys are set up automatically when you start the instance - any cloud provider/VPS service/even kvm with 'uvtools' does this for your (and even if not, it's one ssh-copy-id command).

But yes you need to run, for example, a certbot as well to setup certificates.

so it's: apt install nginx apt install certbot certbot certonly -d your.domain -d www.your.domain # again, when you apt install certbot it installs the cron/timer automatically for automatic certificates renewly and nginx reload

Still less work than going the CDN route I would say.

It really seems to me you don't trust default linux settings and need to take care of everything and fine tune everything but you trust CDN providers thus making the CDN route less work for you. If you trust default settings of a linux distro, it's less time consuming setting it up yourself on linux. Yes that's how user-friendly it really is today.