I started down the NAS road with a used x86 qnap tvs something-or-other off ebay. Theory being, it was “close enough” to a real server to have alternative OSes (aka linux or truenas) if i did not like or trust the qnap os. It was pretty cheap too, since it was missing some drive sleds.

Eventually, as my use and dependence on it grew, i ran into it’s memory ceiling (one sodimm slot)… which is not the bottleneck i was anticipating when i bought it.

If I had to do it again, and since you mentioned being open to tinkering, i would start with a jonsbo (or similar) nas case with commodity hardware. It might be a bit more work/choice, but the flexibility will pay off in the end. Less of a “paint yourself into a corner” effect.

With yadm, your dotfiles are in a git repo, so you can “host” them wherever you want (another machine, “the cloud”, usb drive, a bunch of floppies…)