Personally, I like the eye candy. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We should get an option to opt out. Or, better yet, allow us to reskin on our own with our own themes.
It sounds like you want a combination of things, which is why you are getting such varied responses. Keep in mind, you probably aren’t going to find an all in one solution, but with some docker images you could run a couple different solutions, one for each task. Immich for photos, and maybe another for the family tree.
I was in a similar boat and stumbled across “digital gardens”. I made my own digital garden, and I think if it as a life wiki. It has tech notes, images, recipes, etc. Obviously it’s not a drop in replacement for good photo hosting software or ancestry software tho.
Toilet. Back in the day, the startup I worked for had their servers in the bathroom closet, and the toilet was conveniently located close by.
Sucked having to wait for people to get out of the bathroom, to get into the server room tho lol