Could be what communities you are subscribed to. I run a small instance with about 3ish users, and here are my stats after about 3 months as well:

9.5G ./pictrs
12G	 ./postgres
8.0K ./lemmy-ui

What version of lemmy are you using? A recent update also introduced some space savings in the database (I think).

Yeah, this is what I do… I host a couple of ergo IRC servers and an instance of thelounge for those that want that interface (also offer gamja). Personally, I use weechat to connect to the server.

Familiarity (my client distro is Pop and is based on Ubuntu), and I like the LTS life cycle (predictable).

I do uninstall snaps, though, and mostly just use Docker for things. I could use Debian, but again, for me it was about familiarity and support (a lot more Ubuntu specific documentation).

Do you have a searxng folder in the same folder as your docker-compose.yml? If so, perhaps it is not mounting inside the container properly.

No, but basically jmp.chat takes over your phone number… it acts as your carrier for voice and SMS (similar to Google Voice). Maybe not exactly what you want.

From the FAQ:

You can use JMP to communicate with your contacts without them changing anything on their end, just like with any other telephone provider. JMP works wherever you have an Internet connection. JMP can be used alongside, or instead of, a traditional wireless carrier subscription.

The benefit of this is that you can receive voice and text on anything that can serve as a XMPP client.

You could consider using something like jmp.chat. It delivers SMS via XMPP (aka jabber), so you could self-host a XMPP server and receive SMS that way. It also has some support for MMS (group chat, media), but my experience with it was mixed (I used it for about 3-4 years).

Also joined the club today :)