This came across my feed just yesterday.

Might have some pointers.

fedi.video/w/p/jmffEzZSCEbmtp2…

As far as skill level, I think I could install / manage most things. Though, I would like to look at some "it just works options"

If you know of something that's more technical, but worth it because of the features, im down for that too

I like Jellyfin for media and Nextcloud for phone sync cloud-y things

Potentially consider Proxmox if you want to keep stuff isolated on separate VMs. Maybe not necessary. But it does run great on a laptop, I have a few of those in my basement lol