After verifying that OP’s intent was met I gave a more fun answer that abused the letter of what was asked.

Yes. However as others have already said odds are you don’t have the right devices. Still if you really work at it everything exists. Start by selecting one of the few TVs that support it, then get a good HDMI cable, make sure you have a video card that supports it, with drivers for the OS (you might have to write them yourself), then just setup networking. This would be an interesting hack, I’d love to see someone get it working and show their setup, but it is otherwise useless and will be a lot of work.

Cage is not what I want from a kiosk. I want window management, I just want a few fixed windows in fixed positions. Sometimes I want to rotate between a few windows. I’m running Magicmirror now which gives what I want, but it is too slow and too locked into the everything is a web app model.

I have a pi3 with a 20" touchscreen that I’m using. Raspbian booting to magic mirror. It works, but Magic Mirror is slow bloated/slow that I’m not happy with it. I’m about ready to make my own QT based signage - I suspect it will be much more performant as well as more flexible. Still it is a lot of work and so I hesitate to bother (even if version one could be done in a day - I have enough other projects).

FreeBSD - it won’t be easy, but I’ve been a BSD guy at heart for decades… You will learn a lot and eventually be able to create better systems, but it will be years before you should risk putting anything important on a system - as a noob you have a lot to learn the hard way. Once you think you know FreeBSD you should try the other BSDs, and things like gentoo linux: you will really learn how this works.

You can follow the advice of the others and get a system going sooner. It isn’t a wrong choice, but you won’t learn as much and if something doesn’t work the way you want you are stuck since you can’t dare change anything. As such I have to advice against it despite all the time/effort my advice will cost you.

You can start with used but modern x86 - the n100 line - has very low power usage and will long term be a better investment. A pi is about the same cost once you get the accessories needed and uses as much power to get work done, but can do less work. (If the computers are idel the pi wins)

I had found that. A lot of projects are early releases that have not been touched in years - is that because they are stable or because the author gave up before making them useful? Which is why I want not a list but an opinion from someone else doing this.

I have enough of a machinist background to doubt the threads are anywhere close to perfect. However if you are saying more than good enough I will agree.

Or is it better to save a few bucks now and save it for next year when something new comes out that is faster anyway. Maybe there is a new codec that matters in 3 years but nothing today supports: so either way you are forced to replace your server.

There is no right answer, you are taking your chances when planning for the future. There are many computers more than 10 years old still working just fine in the world, and it is possible that whatever you buy today will be as well. We get enough press releases that we can predict what will happen next year close enough, but in 5 years we have much less information. There is no way to know if saving money is a good choice today or not. I can come up with scenarios either way.

Look at power use. Often last generation hardware uses more power for the things you do today and so the few dollars you save today are made up with in the power bill over the next couple years. (though if you use that new hardware to do something the old couldn’t do the new will use more power!)

If there is only a few dollars difference in price go for the best. However when there are hundreds or even thousands of dollars it becomes a harder decision.

Parts fail all the time. The problem with hardware raid is you need a compatible controller or none of the data can be read even though it is still on the physical disks. Computer hardware is often only made for a few months before there is a new model and so you are risking that the manufacture really made the new model work with what you have. That is assuming the manufacture doesn’t go out of business which could happen without warning. \

Also, if hardware breaks that is often a good excuse to replace it - odds are better hardware is available for the same price and sometimes a lot less $ - with hardware raid you are stuck paying whatever price they charge.

Either works fine for most homes. for most homes everything on the nas makes sense as that saves energy vs a second always on box. For enterprises you want them separate because you can’t get cpu’s powerful enough.

Truenas core because I’m a bsd guy at heart. with that all but dead I’m trying to decide between bare freebsd or xigmanas.

I have a arch linux box for things that don’t run on bsd.

Whichever peertube instance you are viewing the video from. Makertube, urbanists.video are two that I use

The website works fine. I don’t understand the app obcession people have. Though newpipe is an option if you must

one nas device with a lot of power and a vpn for the other houses might be better.

The bigger point about cloud that most miss is make sure you are paying them a reasonably price for the service. So long as you are the customer and not the product the cloud can be good.

First question: what will you do about data backup? Nextcloud and Immich both imply important data that you don’t want to lose. You say you have some harddrives, so look for some computer that can take more than one harddrive and then setup RAID with snapshots. I’d go for a RAID setup such that you need two drives to fail before you lose data, but there are plenty of debate. We often say RAID is not a backup - you should start thinking about the next step in your backup setup soon.

Used vs new is always the question. In general the newer the system the less power it will use to do the same work. However ARM will almost always use less power than x86 even if the x86 is much newer. I specified work here, your computer will nothing most of the time so idle power matters too.

Jellyfin is on his nas which we assume has more power.

streaming what? Streaming one mp3s. Streaming a dozen different video re-encoded to something else probably can’t be done any affordable machine.

Maybe. How much does it use when you use it? For lightly used servers idle power matters. However a modern CPU often uses much less power to get the same amount of work done and so if the server is doing something idle consumption isn’t important.