No it’s not, docker-compose stacks are quite nice and easy to manage.

Nextclouds docker setup is an absolute disaster, I don’t blame you for giving up. It’s also slow as molasses to sync anything.

A couple things to look at, I would probably say look at KaraDAV first.

• KaraDAV, this is a simple webdav server that’s compatible with the Nextcloud sync clients. Uses SQLite for a DB so setup is super simple. Has a basic web based file browser too.

• Owncloud Infinite Scale, still a bit of a setup, but it’s better than what Nextcloud offers.

• Syncthing, this is my current setup, just a robust and solid file sync program. You can pair it up on your server with something like SFTPGo or KaraDAV to provide a web file manager and WebDAV server if you need that. Downside is there’s no selective sync or virtual folder support.

What’s the solution for transport around farms and factories and such then? Trucks will always be needed.

Or for people in rural areas? Its 10 miles to the grocery store for me, if there was a bike lane or something I’d love to ride an ebike when I have the time and in the summer. But certainly not in the winter, or when I’m short on time and don’t have 1+ hours to bike there.

Weight affects basically everything. Less weight means less cost to buy, better range, better handling, less cost of maintenance (brakes, tires, etc), better safety, less getting stuck off-road, and so on…

Chrome doesn’t really collect much data directly. It just has no protection against all the trackers on nearly every website that do.

Well more that when it does work you don’t know for sure which apps are fully backed up.

Go through each app and export its data, then transfer those files off the phone.

Testing if it works is a bit of a pain though, because you need to have a wiped phone to restore the backup on to make sure each app restores properly.

Take backups.

1 or 2 copies of something is not a backup, 3+ is a backup.

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.

The other issue is if you’re offline with no internet service and you come back online, you may not ever see any messages sent during that time.

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.

The biggest downside with P2P on a mobile device is it needs to run in the background all the time, and constantly uses small amounts of data making connections.

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.