For a NAS, like, storage on the network, keep it as simple and as reliable as possible,, so avoid Ubuntu and go to the core underlying OS: Debian.
Then just build up the functionality you need, is SMB, NFS, etc.
Personally, I went from OMV to a home built NAS, but went with Arch as that's what I use elsewhere (btw), so am comfortable with it, but it's bleeding edge which isn't always the best if some functionality changes when you're not ready for it.
If you're going for a server running lots of containers, etc, then find whatever the container handler (docker?) is best on... I just put everything on bare metal, so can't advise what's best for containers... probably Debian again...
Wireshark is the best way as it'll show you exactly what's going on; DNS addresses, traffic type, etc. (But not inside encrypted packets)
But to do that it (you) need to see all the traffic between the ceiling light and the internet, so if you're on wifi and it's on wifi, that won't work.
Hopefully your router has the ability to either do a packet capture, or, mirror traffic to a physical port.
Yep, I have a Fairphone... it can operate with an unlocked boot loader...
I'm not an Android developer, but reading more it seems that where I thought the modular kernel would allow patching, it does seem to be a monolithic compiled object.
So, ok, I could probably dig out the source for AOSP / LineageOS patches, but possibly not for the GKI.
Yeah, Point 1 here is exactly why I moved from Ubuntu to Arch ~10 years ago.
I was trying to get something working and found that the bug / feature had been fixed ~1 year earlier, but that version wasn't in the repos... I couldn't move forwards.
With Arch, all is well. And, I'm either reporting new bugs and helping to get things fixed, or I'm updating the wiki with any changes I notice.
After seeing someone at work burnout, I'll offer this advice:
Find what you enjoy doing and do nothing more (today). Itch only 1 scratch at a time.
As an analogy - consider you've moved into a newly built house and have an empty garden. No-one would expect you to create that perfectly first time around. Esp. in 1 weekend. It needs time to grow. Some things will need cutting down, some things will need moving. Animals will crap on it.
I think you're trying to make it perfect, first time around. Perhaps as a fear of doing it "wrong".
There is no wrong, it's all a learning experience, doing things good enough for now and improving / breaking things later.
Ensure you know how to backup your files (3-2-1 rule) and the rest doesn't matter.
I've re-written my ansible scripts a few times, but over months and years as I've learned what works best for my system.
For example, I had 1 complete script for each device. I can wipe the device (get it back on the network) and rebuild with no effort...
... then I realised that most of the scripts had very similar parts to tweak SSH and other settings, so then I learned how to call scripts from within scripts, which also meant using variables (facts) to work out if this is a 32b or 64b RasPi (for example)
That probably took 3 months
But I enjoy sitting in my garden and looking at it...
I'm running it outside of a container and outside a VM... as there's no abstraction layer on top of the underlying OS. Which I guess is inside the bare metal.
Yeah, TBH, I dropped NC some years ago because each update almost needed a complete reconfigure.
I hope this means that they have enough funding to get the bugs squashed.