I ended up installing Debian since Yunohost can't install and my old laptop doesn't meet the hardware requirements of TrueNAS Scale

don't go with server variants of the OS. they are intended for boxes that work without display and keyboard, which you have. instead, install any normal distro you're familiar with. it's infinitely easier to fix something with the full GUI at your disposal.

this is just your first install, you will iterate, and through that process you'll get better and leaner, in terms of underlying OS. think of it as training wheels on a bike, you'll pull them off eventually.

wired connection only, leave wireless turned off, and assign it a static IP address.

don't do containerS, do one container first. figure out where you're gonna store the compose files, where it will store data, how you will back that data up, etc. then add another. does it fit into your setup? do you need to modify something? rinse. repeat.

casaOS, aside from it's murky background (some chinese startup or sumsuch, forgot?) doesn't provide that path forward nor allows you to learn something, too much hand holding.

good luck.

I would recommend trying out Cockpit (Github) and Portainer (Github).
Cockpit gives you a WebUI for Linux and Portainer gives you a WebUI for Docker.
Personally I usually run Debian Stable for servers, but choice of distro matters little if you run stuff as Docker containers.

i tried CasaOS for a quick minute. its decent and just has the basics like setting up any disks and then has an app store. its really just a front end for docker and you can manually input the details of any docker containers that arent in the store

ive mostly been running docker stuff on my Synology nas. cant think of the model number now, 218+ i think, but any of the "plus" models will let you run docker. its very similar to Casa, no messing around with command line stuff. ive been self hosting for 10 years now and never touched the command line so i dont know what people are on about here saying you will have trouble

dietpi is another thing ive used on a few devices, mainly small SBCs and raspberry pi's, but i think they might have a version that you can install on anything. its basically just debian, and it has a sort of a wizard that helps set up various things like set up disks and install apps. its headless though so no GUI unless you install one, and the wizard is run from the terminal but youre not having to type any commands at least

Maybe you might find home in one of those NAS ootimized distros like Openmediavault, truenas, unraid. If not CasaOS or old good Debian with portainer.

YUNOhost is designed for this. You can do almost everything graphically via the webadmin. Mine has been running for a couple of years and I'm very happy with it. I have email, XMPP (both of which were installed out of the box), a website, file sharing and a few other things. There are a tonne of apps available, including Fediverse instances, Nextcloud. It's a very cool thing to have available for making self-hosting more accessible.

I honestly would use a headless Linux system with docker compose. You can find premade docker compose files.

Mint or Ubuntu is like Windows but better.

The learning curve might be a little high in some regards, but you may want to try NixOS. There are quite a few services ready to enable and customize for self-hosting, and the design makes updating packages fairly simple.

To be clear, NixOS is not a "simple" solution, but it does work well for self hosting.

You can install some Linux distro and then install a docker management web UI like coolify. Requires little terminal knowledge. Though you should learn the terminal.

Try the Fedora Server distro, afaik it should come with Cockpit installed: https://fedoraproject.org/server/

If you are mostly hosting files, open media vault has minimal command line, and it's mostly administered through a web admin. It's still fairly complex however, and I definitely recommend reading the manual thoroughly and sticking with easy tasks at first. https://www.openmediavault.org/

I was in the same spot about 3 years ago and I started with Unraid. Got me into docker and dipping my toes into command line stuff.

Honestly though you're going to quickly outgrow your old laptops...

Umbrel OS

I went with Truenas Scale and was pleasantly surprised it needed no command line kung fu