Yep, documentation and a good base level default installation configuration/guide with minimal friction.

I’m perfectly willing to play around once I know at the basic level that the core flow is going to work for me. If it takes me digging through a stack of documentation (especially if it’s bad) to even get something to experiment with on my own system? I won’t bother.

Yes, it is?

Your rant doesn’t make sense. Asking for suggestions because you’re not OK with being spied on (especially when you’re perfectly willing to absorb the hosting costs yourself or pay for a service that isn’t hostile) is perfectly valid behavior.

Serious question: last I looked at casaOS (because I liked the hardware), they had SSH open and accessible to default passwords by default. This scared me off hard.

Is this still a thing/are there other glaring security holes?