Data cap never made sense because ISPs pay for pipe size, not total of data. Someone using 20mbps 24/7 will use a lot more data but cause a lot less congestion than someone using 300mbps for 1hr at peak hour every day.

If their infra is undersized, they should at least not count data between midnight and 8am toward the data cap since the pipes are mostly sitting idles

I use Ubuntu for everything (including at work, tens of thousands machines) and it’s great

You can order a Canadian server with fairly low latency. I have one but I also have a couple of machines at home. I don’t like buying used and I care about wattage so I usually get beelinks mini PC from Amazon. They often have deals where you can have good specs for <$150, including 128gb SSDs, 8 or 16gb of ram and a 4 cores 15w CPU