Every single time I talk to my friends, whom also want an *arr/Plex/VPN/Home Assistant setup like I’ve got, I can see the fear in their eyes when I mention Debian, Docker, and the terminal. It could be a case of “git gud”, but I want to help them out with a setup like this, but with as low friction as possible. Ideally something completely GUI based, and very low maintenance.
I know of unRAID, and Portainer, but does anyone have any experience in setting up something like this for people whose knowledge of self hosting and networking aren’t as good as yours?
The thing is, many people will show some interest in this but ultimately don’t want to do it themselves. It does require varying amounts of time to learn & most importantly to fix it. Many people are time poor or would use their spare time on other stuff.
You should ask whether they’re genuinely interested in setting this up & if so what the concerns are.
Agreed with this, they may want the setup but have no interest in managing it, no matter how simple you get it. If you do it for them you might be setting yourself up as their permanent support.
I’d gauge how interested they actually are, and make sure they’re willing to learn enough to follow basic maintenance routines.