A lot of those points are more or less unrelated.

You can set up a samba share with a bare metal ubuntu/fedora/gentoo/whatever machine. Similarly, you can run nextcloud on whatever (I like the containerized version but…). And you can (probably) do both on a freenas box.

As for my personal setup: most of my NAS I just access via smb or scp/rsync. But for stuff that I do need synchronized, I use nextcloud… with said smb share('s directory) mounted into the container. It is far from the most secure approach (seriously, how the hell is nextcloud a commercial product when it is so feature bare and prone to breaking in containers!!!), but these are files where the goal is mostly convenience (game saves, etc) rather than privacy.

I mean, that is just another way of checking your dashboards. So is just futzing around semi-regularly.

Unless you are dealing with a high availability setup, it matters a lot less whether you do a push/pull model for notifications so long as you are regularly checking then. The issue is when you have people who just buy a synology or a qnap, shove it in the attic for two years, and then realize they lost three drives AND are infected by ransomware.

Honestly? You already hit it. The pihole. Maybe a firewall/router so that they can switch away from the comcast “modem” to a small computer running opnsense and then either ubiquity or omada for easily upgraded wifi support.

For just about anything else? I would honestly say “no” to the “average joe”. Unless you are running a backup solution, it is just a liability. And a backup solution involves offsite backups of the important stuff. Just having a NAS is worse than worthless unless it is solely used for data you don’t want to keep at which point… why do you have it? Because hardware failures will happen and, unless you are regularly checking your dashboards, they will happen in rapid succession.