I'll have to check mikupad. For the most part i've been using sillytavern with a generic assistant card because it looked like it would allow me plenty of space to tweak stuff. Even if it's not technically meant for the more traditional assistant use case.
Thanks for the cheatsheet, it wil come really handy once i manage to set everything up. Most likely i'll use podman to make a container for each engine.
As for the hardware side. The thinkcentre arrived today. But the card still has to arrive. Unfortunately i can't really ask more questions if i can't set it all up first to see what goes wrong / get a sense of what i Haven't understood.
I'll keep you guys updated with the whole case modding stuff. I think it will be pretty fun to see come along.
Thanks for everything.