For those who are saying just photoshop.
https://methodshop.com/photoshop-money/
Obviously you can just use other software but PS is the main choice for image editing. What they need to do is put legislation in place and it will make the biggest players implement this form of drm.
You make good points here for the beginner however there are better alternatives and solutions for basically everything you mentioned here. The biggest I want to address is conflicts on your system. Generally running servers on metal is just outright bad practice. Containerize. Always containerize. There are lots of great options. Docker, podman, Lxc, helm, flatpak… hell. Snap if you must. Running servers on metal is generally is just asking for trouble unless the system’s entire purpose is for that. Also the cg-nat situation. Personally been behind it for a few years but it’s not a problem as long as you have a reverse proxy tunnel in place. Not a hard fix at all.