Need? No. But hardware acceleration makes things faster and more efficient.

I can recommend this site for up-to-date and fairly neutral parts recommendations split by budget https://www.logicalincrements.com

Emoticons*

There is no one-size-fits-all architecture. Microservices are fine, but probably not for you.

No config. It should just work

What a horrible clickbait title, description and thumbnail. I refuse to click this and give it any views

Unless you have the ability to root it, does it matter? It’s likely a completely custom, stripped down distro anyway.

External communities are just searchable, subscribable and browsable from here. Sometimes you need to change a search filter or default view from Local to All. Or is there something else you feel is missing? I think 90% of the issues people are having are UX related and not a core issue with federation or decentralization.