most important is don't make public channels, they are a pain and a waste if you have under like 10Msat and don't even bother on a home connection 

 Yeah I guess we skipped ahead. nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7erfw36x7tnsw43z7un9d3shjqpqqdjn8j4gwgmkj3k5un775nq6q3q7mguv5tvajstmkdsqdja2havqmp5l49 what are your goals? Do you just plan to use it as a personal wallet? Run a service? Route payments? Run a mint? Something else? 

 To be clear I have a strong sysadmin background, so that's not the issue for me, it's the lightning specific technical stuff, and apparently the financial side that no one has been clear about. 

I just need a wallet to send and receive funds, other stuff is just for fun to support the network. 

I don't use a smart phone, I haven't found a working desktop wallet, and absolutely no KYC. So my options are severely limited. I also want to keep the scope of my footprint small and understandable, which is why I have been avoiding other alternatives that nostr supports.  

 I think https://albyhub.com/ would fit your needs well. Our goals seem aligned and this works great for me. 

 I feel like whatever they're doing I should be able to do too, unless they're doing some sort of magic based on external services, which I believe it does with the chain-state already.  

 Well you are far above me then because whatever they are doing I most certainly could not do! I felt proud that I was able to host this let alone get there from scratch! 

 zap wallet is good, it's a Neutrino/LND wallet... it needs a BIP-157 full node to connect to, i think it's strike that runs the ones that are default in zap

oh, sadly it's unmaintained for a year now: https://github.com/LN-Zap/zap-desktop

Jack Mallers built it originally 

 If you want to be a node runner, that's cool but it's important to be clear about the risks. You are running an always-on hot wallet with your keys exposed to the internet. In addition to getting hacked, you run the risk of losing money due to channel force closes, hardware failure, and software bugs. You can't earn any significant yield as a pleb node runner so it's basically all downside. And if you don't have serious technical chops it will be a very frustrating uphill battle.

The lone upside is that you will learn a lot of valuable skills the hard way. You might be able to parley them into a job if that is your goal. If that is not your goal, save yourself a whole lot of trouble and use phoenix wallet or minibits. Minibits is custodial so keep your balance low to limit the downside of getting rugged. Phoenix is amazing and self-custodial but unavailable in US app stores thanks to the overzealous chaps in the regulatory apparatus.