linuxoveruser

What I think you are getting at with your question is that even in the way it is colloquially applied (“evil regime” / repression / lack of rights), the term authoritarianism is applied unequally. Actions that would be described as evil or authoritarian in somewhere like China are brushed off or ignored when they apply to so-called Western liberal democracies like the UK. To that I would absolutely agree, and I think that observation further speaks to the uselessness of the term in constructive dialogue.

Not really an answer to your question, but many would argue that the term “authoritarian” in its modern connotation is practically useless. What I mean is that there is no single definition of the term which is specific enough to be applied and understood in the context of a specific country, political system, etc. While certain academic disciplines attempt to agree on specific definitions, the reality is that most colloquial usage of the term is solely to demonize nations or ideologies without meaningful critique. Here’s one of many articles on the subject, which I think gives a decent overview: https://www.peoplesline.org/p/authoritarian-is-an-analytically

The purpose of having a web-based user interface is to enable remote installation using a web-browser, which I imagine could be a pretty common use-case for server installation. Since a web-based interface is necessary for remote installation, it makes sense to use the same interface locally instead of having two independent interfaces.

Nix is probably the best way to get all of those things set up without shipping a whole distro, but there will be a bit of a learning curve. If you’d like something a bit easier to set up for development (still based on Nix), I’d recommend devenv.sh.

Maybe Discourse? The mobile website is pretty good and there are also a number of third-party mobile apps.