I definitely agree with OP on this and do my best to minimize maintenance burden for most of my projects. This has worked out pretty well in that almost everything I've published[0] can chug along in the background for months or years without me touching them at all (some of them earn a few hundred dollars per month[1])

>On the server I run Ubuntu LTS until it's near the end of its supported lifetime. Every two years I run do-release-upgrade and move to the next one. This cost is shared over many jefftk.com projects, so it isn't too bad.

I was surprised by this part because running your own server seems like a big maintenance burden. I'd expect that you have to regularly upgrade your packages to protect yourself from security vulnerabilities.

I've avoided this by using PaaS solutions like AppEngine or static hosting + cloud functions. The closest thing I have to a VPS is publishing Docker containers, but that's basically my last resort.

[0] https://mtlynch.io/projects/

[1] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2021/09/#legacy-projects