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I don't know what commercial POS NAS you tried, but the Synology devices automatically show up in the network section of the file manager and you can then use them like any other network drive.
They do also have an online portal for configuration etc. though, and that is the definition of bloat. Basically it's got a whole graphical desktop environment with windows and UI animations. And an app store for plugins(that fail to install). -
@deadlyRants Only seen them used by others, never even gave them much thought. While storage servers aren't always straightforward to set up, Samba is pretty much peanuts. Also the price/performance of a NAS is similar to regular servers, so there's no point in buying a NAS over just building it out of a regular computer (desktop or server doesn't even matter much). I suppose that commercial NAS's do have their place in home networks though. It's just that I prefer the customizability of general-purpose hardware/software and being able to select every part of it.
Anything I (am able to) build myself.
Also, things that are reasonably standardized. So you probably won't see me using a commercial NAS (needing a web browser to navigate and up-/download my files, say what?) nor would I use something like Mega, despite being encrypted. I don't like lock-in into certain clients to speak some proprietary "secure protocol". Same reason why I don't use ProtonMail or that other one.. Tutanota. As a service, use the standards that already exist, implement those well and then come offer it to me.
But yeah. Self-hosted DNS, email (modified iRedMail), Samba file server, a blog where I have unlimited editing capabilities (God I miss that feature here on devRant), ... Don't trust the machines nor the services you don't truly own, or at least make an informed decision about them. That is not to say that any compute task should be kept local such as search engines or AI or whatever that's best suited for centralized use.. but ideally, I do most of my computing locally, in a standardized way, and in a way that I completely control. Most commercial cloud services unfortunately do not offer that.
Edit: Except mail servers. Fuck mail servers. Nastiest things I've ever built, to the point where I'd argue that it was wrong to ever make email in the first place. Such a broken clusterfuck of protocols, add-ons (SPF, DKIM, DMARC etc), reputation to maintain... Fuck mail servers. Bloody soulsuckers those are. If you don't do system administration for a living, by all means do use the likes of ProtonMail and Tutanota, their security features are nonstandard but at least they (claim to) actually respect your privacy.
rant
wk174