You can root GOS like any other Android-based OS. It’s just highly discouraged, completely unsupported and, in the opinion of the GOS devs, you will no longer be considered to be running GOS since you are compromising the core OS by doing so.

Your options will depend on many things…

• How much storage is needed?
• Is RAID important to you?
• Is power usage a concern?
• Noise level?

I don’t know how demanding photoprism is, but you could probably do fine with a refurbished i5/i7 Dell Optiplex or similar, with one or more SSDs added to it. If money is really tight and storage needs are high, you could go with mechanical drives instead.

The problem with enterprise servers is that are generally very loud and use a lot of power…not unlike adding a second refrigerator to your environment. In my opinion, they’re not worth it unless you have a specific use case (training for a career, etc.).

I have a JF instance running on Proxmox as well, but it hasn’t won me over yet. Still, I know a lot of folks do prefer it to Kodi and others so there must be something to it.

As others have said, just buy a TV that meets your A/V needs and don’t connect it to the internet.

I know everyone talks about Jellyfin these days, but Kodi is an excellent option too if you don’t need streaming to multiple devices. I use Kodi via LibreElec on an rpi4 and it’s been great. All media is stored on my home server and shared over Samba, but you can easily store it locally on the box if you don’t have a server.

For music streaming, I run a separate instance of miniDLNA on my server, since I like to browse-by-directory for my music instead of relying solely on metadata. This also allows you to stream to any DLNA-friendly device on the LAN.

I’ve digitized my disc collection and just keep the physical media as a backup. The local library has a huge selection of media too…and if we don’t use it, we’ll lose it.

It’s been a long time in the making, but I’ve finally degoogled and largely removed all proprietary software from my personal life. I know this topic is pretty well covered here and elsewhere so just to add to the list of others, here’s where I’m at these days:

• OS: Fedora (Silverblue) Linux (w/ AMD Radeon GPU)
• Email: Thunderbird w/ hosted email over IMAP
• Calendar/Contacts: Radicale instance w/ DAVx⁵ on Android
• Storage: Syncthing
• Web: Firefox
• Search: Startpage and DuckDuckGo mostly, but still use Google and Bing on occasion
• IM: Signal
• Desktop productivity: LibreOffice when I need it (Collabora Office on Android)
• Notes: Vim, VS Code (Markor on Android); most of my “docs” are just plain text files written in markdown
• Passwords: KeepassXC/DX
• Code editor: Vim, VS Code
• GrapheneOS on mobile, with almost entirely FOSS apps
• Kindle e-book reader with management via Calibre
• Media managed by Kodi with a raspberry pi
• Proxmox hypervisor for Windows/Linux VMs and containers

Gaming under Linux has improved unbelievably these past few years, now that Steam is contributing with their Steam Deck platform. I used to have to dual-boot Windows to keep up with the latest titles, but I wiped it about a year ago and things have been great.

I still rely on Microsoft Excel and Adobe Photoshop for some tasks, but less so now than ever before. Unfortunately, my work will always be a Windows-only environment.