I took a look at the BuyVM offer you mentioned since it sounds really good, but am I understanding correctly that to make use of the 1TB storage offer I would have to also order a dedicated VM with them to actually make use of it? (i.e. no mounting from a vps with a different provider)

It definitely used to be the case, you are right, always had to dkms the binder module.

But it seems they come baked into the kernel nowadays, according to ArchWiki.

While that is a really nice list, and I will save it for the future - I don’t think OP was looking for Lemmy applications, seeing as they mention they are:

using Friendica Mastodon Sharkey, Pixelfed and bridgy with bluesky

Same, love rdddddddddtrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrc