phanto

Feel free to ask questions if you have them. I am no expert, but I am willing to try to help if you get stuck.

1. You are going to find people who have done both. A lot of NAS devices run kind of low powered CPUs so separating it out into two devices can get you more compute power than a single device. For example, an old as the hills file bay may cost next to nothing, and then using your "last" desktop will get you a lot more storage and compute than a 1500$ modern NAS, but it'll take up more space, cost more in electricity to run, and make more fan noise. This is the route I went. A modern NAS should be able to run what you listed though.
2. TrueNAS scale is all about storage, but it lets you also run containers. Proxmox is all about virtualization, but you can then run a storage solution inside a VM or container. It's not the kind of thing you're going to get a right answer for because either way can work. Both are well-documented, capable solutions. I have tried both at times, but I had a lot more experience with Proxmox by the time I deployed TrueNAS, so I stuck with Proxmox and use a TrueNAS box (bare metal) for backups. It really is a matter of preference.
3. If you have a MiniPC and NAS as separate devices, you will want to set up a network share, so you can seed on the MiniPC the copy that's on the NAS. My seeding, Jellyfin, Plex, etc, all happen in a virtual hard drive mounted in a separate container from the services. Each of the services "see that drive as a network share despite being hosted on the same physical hardware.

I use ProtonVPN and it sets up a "leak shield" interface when you start it and destroys that when you end it. It keeps traffic from flowing out over the non-vpn internet. The problem is, if the VPN crashes or doesn't shut down gracefully, that interface kills all traffic.

To test if it's something like that, try pinging an outside address, first by name and then by IP. If you can't get either, it's not the DNS messing you up. If you CAN ping the IP but not the name, then it is the DNS messing you up.

Haha! Eggs. That's a flex!

As a Canuck, I'm pretty much going to welcome anyone fleeing the Mango Mussolini.

Guys... "sudo." Four characters.

Esperanto ekzistas!

I have a Tiny connected to a startech dual USB drive dock. The drives get warm, but not deadly hot. Moving big files is a bit slow, but for streaming on Plex and Jellyfin it works fine.

I have two indoor cats. They're constantly trying to get out. My neighbors have two outdoor cats. They constantly try to get into my house! Do you know how hard it is to take out garbage when there's four cats vying to pass through any door you open?

I have a house in Alberta. I wonder if there's a way to cede my property back to the Treaty nations when I die... They deserve it more than my relatives do.

Chuck: the Subway scenes. Wow product placement.

I didn't know anything about docker when I set up my NC years ago, so I ran it as a snap on bare metal. Man, it's gotten so much better! It used to really suck. Like, simple file transfers just didn't work half the time, so I'd be retrying the same thing over and over... A few years ago, I literally migrated it from bare metal to a VM, but kept the exact same install. I have so much crap on it now, I think I'll never bother switching it out to docker, just because of the inconvenience. I know the snap version can just run using a local hostname, you just have to set it in trusted domains setting. Might be the same in the docker image?