From what you described, using Home Assistant in the center would be the way to go (works fine on a raspberry pi, in the beginning at least)
For the devices, I mainly use zigbee sensors and lights etc. and bunch of fully DIY stuff running mostly on ESP32 with ESPHome.
For the starters, you can skip the zigbee devices all together and experiment with Home Assistant + ESPHome
From what you described, using Home Assistant in the center would be the way to go (works fine on a raspberry pi, in the beginning at least)
For the devices, I mainly use zigbee sensors and lights etc. and bunch of fully DIY stuff running mostly on ESP32 with ESPHome.
For the starters, you can skip the zigbee devices all together and experiment with Home Assistant + ESPHome