There's a lot to address here as you're talking about hardware and possibly multiple levels of software.

Yes, you can do this with raspberry pi or any SBC or mini PC. Even an old desktop PC if space isn't an issue.

In terms of photo management software, I really like Photoprism. Immich seems to be popular as well.

In order to get your photos synced to multiple computers over the internet (a good idea for resilience), you could look at syncthing. Alternatively, you could have one central server and one or two backups in different locations using borg backup or similar. In my experience, backups are easier to manage and make it easier to recover from data loss than replicating the current state of your data in multiple places. You can do both, though.

It's a very worthwhile project, but may be pretty difficult unless you are already comfortable with server technology or are enthusiastic about learning.

Look at the Steam Deck as an example:

• Linux is preinstalled
• Integrated hardware and software
• Immutable OS that is very hard to bork
• UI is Windows-like which is familiar to the target market
• Good value for the price
• Offered by a well-known and well-liked brand
• Marketed and advertised to the target market

We need more Linux devices like this to gain market share.

Fedi client app developers need to design fedi client apps in a holistic way to include a custom server (as with Mammoth's moth.social) or create an account for the user on one of a curated selection of other servers, without forcing the user to choose one.

It's a severe problem with trying to grow fedi that general users are expected to understand how servers work and make an informed decision about which one to join. General users don't care about this topic and will quickly turn away when it is forced upon them. That's why the client app needs to handle this for the user without making a fuss about it.

These apps also need good discovery features and feeds with posts that are trending generally and for specific topics. Then devs need to make money with those apps somehow, then they need to market those apps (at this point, it goes beyond just "devs" and expands into an organization with a marketing department, etc.).

Then, hopefully fedi's inherent advantages of interoperability and resilience will naturally cause people to choose these user-friendly, effectively marketed fedi client apps over things like Instagram, Tiktok, etc. After all, if it can't compete on its own merits with all other factors being equal, there's no point to it for most people.

Roland Emmerich's movies are more disaster than sci-fi predominantly, but I enjoy them even though they are of very questionable quality, especially 2012.

I liked Shin Kamen Rider even though the acting leaves something to be desired and the plot is kind of obtuse, plus the CGI is kind of cheesy.

The American Digimon movie (2000) is kind of a mess in terms of editing and the third part sucks, but I really enjoy the voice acting and the first two parts are solid if a bit rushed. Also the Barenaked Ladies needle drop is iconic.

It's a hard user experience design problem to create an interface that presents all possible types of posts, content and interactions in a sensible way. This "kitchen sink" approach is kind of what Facebook does and as a result its interface is messy and cluttered. That's not to say it's impossible or wrong to do things that way, just difficult and unpopular.

On the technical side, it's really hard to make a client app that works with multiple server softwares, because they all have different sets of features.

In the current world of fedi software development, it would be a single dev or a small, likely unpaid team that would have to make the equivalent of several different client apps combined into one. I don't anticipate such a large and complicated project being completed until the devs can make a decent living doing the work.

I think it should be really clear to everyone now that the Steam Deck is exactly the kind of thing that Linux needs: nice hardware with a well-integrated OS that is designed to be user-friendly and has some guardrails to prevent you from breaking it.

Some of my fav quotes:

"Ads in an operating system that you've paid for from a company that owns ridiculous amounts of money is so offensive."

"data, it's like the new gold to people"

"I got the confidence to really jump into Linux after the Steam Deck."

[regarding the terminal] "You just see text going across the screen, they're working at lightning speeds."

"I'm kissing convenience goodbye, I just want control."

Which features are most important to you? Search/discovery, categorization, tagging, sharing...?

These days I usually just search the web for images and save them to folders on my computer. I have the folders synced to my cloud storage, so I can access them from any computer if I want to.

1. Nosferatu (1922)
2. Cat People (1942)
3. Alien (1979)
4. Under The Skin (2014)
5. It Follows (2014)

Nextcloud may be a bit overkill for your use case, but it does have a very good video chat function. It's also pretty easy to deploy as a snap package or with the AIO docker image. A downside is that the other person has to have an account on your instance and log into it to join a call. However this is not necessarily difficult to arrange.

I'll quote Vaxry from his blog:

"Obviously, the fact that I am banned from contributing to Freedesktop - and by extension wlroots, is another big factor, and probably the one that finally tipped the scales, because I am no longer allowed to participate in discussion or contribute code to wlroots."

https://blog.vaxry.net/articles/2024-wlrootsRewrite

"I definitely am not a fan of how seemingly weak people online, especially teenagers, have become. Words are just words. Someone calling another person a "retard" shouldn't really be a big deal."

"I said:

if I run a discord server around cultivating tomatoes, I should not exclude people based on their political beliefs, unless they use my discord server to spread those views. which means even if they are literally adolf hitler, I shouldn't care, as long as they don't post about gassing people on my server

that is inclusivity

Which I definitely stand by."

https://blog.vaxry.net/articles/2023-inclusiveActivists

Fair enough