In general, I would say it’s not hard, but it’s not easy.

When I did it, I had some moderate Linux experience but I was by no means an expert. I did a few practice runs on a VM and made myself a runbook before I completed the install on my real computer. This allowed me to get a real sense for what I was doing and what each step did, exactly. When I ran into differences on my actual computer, the time I spent researching and doing it on the VM helped me to overcome any confusion and complete the install successfully. The wiki has all the information you need.

So, from beginning to end, I spent a weekend on it, including the few dry runs I did on the VM and configuring my system after the actual install was complete. If you’re not already quite familiar with Linux, I think it’s wise to do it this way because you build in time to learn, as opposed to just getting a working system as quickly as possible.

That is absolutely wild.

Eh, it’s not a complete waste of time - AWS will only allow for 35 days of snapshots because they want you to use yet more managed services like Backup. Tossing even 60 days of backups on S3 can make clients a lot happier.

Seconding this. Among all the web IRC clients I have tried, The Lounge is the best, and the experience on mobile is pretty good.