Thank you for the incredibly detailed and patient reply. I will try some additional applications like Jellyfin and Immich instead of the built in synology stuff. It was always my intention to have docker images running on a separate server but stress went up and free time went down and I settled for using the built in applications. Luckily, I havent significantly invested in video center as I just used it to preview files while sorting in DSM.

I had some issues with copying files over SMB. I can write fine, I can delete, but copying seems to fail. My guess is because the local user on my laptop is different than the user on the SMB share. In any case, I was using the file explorer in DSM in Firefox to sort through old media by hand. I’ll have to use NFS and continue to sort via Dolphin.

I’m glad to hear the situation isn’t as dire as I had initially imagined. Perhaps I’m a bit shell shocked from all the enshittification that I jumped to worst case scenarios.

I don’t like using cashless anything because I know part of the cost is my privacy. Having said that, convenience is a powerful draw and cash can be a pain, especially when you have to find a spot for small coins.