Not a stranger to using linux, but never bothered with keeping things synchronized between devices.
I have a laptop, and a desktop both running Arch (I use Arch BTW) and wanted to investigate the best way to synchronize things from device to device. Just to outline some details, both are running KDE on Wayland, both BTRFS, as well as a number of other similarities such as username.
I want to be able to synchronize certain config files, Documents and Files, and was going to go the Syncthing route.
What are you doing, or what would you recommend to setup in order to have parity between two devices?
Use rsync
From my understanding, without having a VPN connection to my home network, or proper port forwarding (which sounds like a security nightmare to me) it would only function on my local network?
Imho, opening the SSH port exclusively to your computer isn’t a bigger risk than setting up a VPN, if you use authentication by keyfiles
a certificate.By cert you mean a ssh key pair correct? As in public and private keys.
Yes
That is fair. Just historically speaking, I have typically only had 1 port opened on my router for VPN access, and then setting up SSH cert auth from system to system.
Like Shrek, layers xD