MangoPenguin

I'd say go Debian and Docker, proxmox is nice if you're running a lot of VMs or want HA and clustering but otherwise you don't really need it.

If you want a GUI for docker containers there are several, Komodo or Portainer are good options.

US Mobile is a good option too, even cheaper than Mint IIRC and you can switch yourself between Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile networks.

People like my parents. I feel like I'm explaining in circles here lol.

OMV is not easy for the average person, you have to know how to boot and install an OS, how to access something on your network via IP, how to assign a static IP, what raid type to use (or not use), how to install and configure something like Nextcloud to access and sync files, where to store files on the filesystem, how to install and configure backups to remote storage.. I could go on.

Something as common as having a Google drive type interface on a NAS is very complex with OMV and other open source options.

Photoshop I can mostly replace with Photopea and Penpot, but Lightroom alternatives are not easy to use (or are RAW editors only and don't do photo management) and I haven't figure out what to do there yet.

Fusion 360 is the real sticking point, there's no replacement for that or anything that even comes close.

They are significantly easier to use.

That's fine for us techy people, but my parents would not be able to do that.

Is that much of a big deal though? Running old GPU drivers is fine, other than maybe if you like playing the latest AAA games down the road.

I mean eventually it will be an issue, but for a long time I imagine they will work just fine.

Windows only applications mostly. The ones I use are Fusion 360, Photoshop, Lightroom, and NI Labview. Unfortunately CAD/Graphic design software also often really struggles to run in WINE, especially with updates happening fairly often.

I've thought of a windows VM, but that's just not worth the extra effort of dealing with hardware passthrough to get proper GPU acceleration.

I really like Linux, all my servers and VMs run Debian or Alpine. But it's just a lot of work for desktop use in my experience (yes I know some of you have never had a single thing break), stuff just randomly breaks for no reason, I'll do a system update and just get a black screen from botched GPU drivers, or back when I ran GNOME my extensions would randomly break after an update and never work again, sometimes installing a simple application like steam would nuke my package manager.

As much as people complain about windows and some do have poor experiences, for me it's pretty much set and forget, I installed W11 on my desktop maybe 4 years ago shortly after release and it's just.. there. It works fine, it doesn't break, all my apps, games, and drivers still work after updates.

IMO no.

Small instances can have issues with federation and now showing all replies/content.

There's also the aspect that you'll need to moderate content stored on your server, if someone posts something illegal and your server caches it, you're responsible for cleaning it up.

The service will always be on a port, that's just how networking works.

Do you mean you want to get rid of the path and serve it on the root or a subdomain? So https://searx.mydomain/ instead of https://mydomain/searx/

What do you want to do? Your explanation isn't very clear on that..

No IMO.

Docker is universal, you can easily migrate to any system. If you migrate you're stuck on TrueNAS.

Also you can use watchtower for auto updates with major version pinning when needed (ie; postgres), or one of the many docker images that notify you when updates are available.