Me as well I don’t like nextcloud at all

Need something like synology drive but open source

Yes it can

Bashupload

Use tailscale

Try unraid it has free trial

Try truenas

Try all of em use what you like at the end that’s what I did

And it depends on use case

I settled with unraid

Netmaker Netbird Headscale/tailscale with your own drep server

This sequence