Stock raspberry os and syncthing sounds like the easiest way to do this.

I also dislike graphana kabana elastic behemot.

You can use rsyslog to centralize the logs. Then there’s tools like this for anomaly detection on those logs.

A small application I wrote myself, hosted on the free tier of pythonanywhere.com

Uptime monitoring and notifications

I’ve done cron @reboot keep-one-running <mycommand> before (1)

My guess is tracker is outdated

Great news, thanks!

Hopefully the android releases will be able to follow, as I understand the original syncthing authors will no longer be supporting android.

Walnut size? I’d recommend the s2m package, squirrel to marmot. Ask for doctor Nutcase

It helps build a decentralized network, usefull as most governments are turning further autocrat.

Aah, ISP’s NAT. Yes, in that context, it’s correct that you can’t port forward.

Perhaps you can STUN through, but unlikely to get a good port.

Port forwarding was invented for exactly that

1. Port forwarding
2. Yes, and there’s services that do that for you

Static IP is helpfull but not necessary. Even with NAT and a changeing IP there’s options, such as:

1. dynamic dns.
2. Public reverse proxy or tunnel.
3. Onion routing.

Quick, but sadly incorrect

It makes things easier, but you have options, such as:

1. dynamic dns.
2. Public reverse proxy or tunnel.
3. Onion routing.

Debian LTS with unattended upgrades is my go-to

which one could recommend that tech illiterate family member.

I’ve given up as their thinking is so fundamentally different, and they refuse to meet even one inch towards the middle :-)

The confusing diversity of all the options is just not helping the wider public.

Agreed that that’s the case, but don’t quite agree that that’s a problem

My first thought as well :)