I generally just use latest for most services. For critical stuff I pin the major version number. Also anything that doesn't gracefully handle major version updates like Postgres and similar.
If something breaks I fix it, or restore from the nightly backup if I can't.
Basically a backup is a point in time snapshot that you can restore from. So you'd run backups daily or multiple times per day and can easily get back deleted or changed files.
Whereas with a sync service if you delete that file or change it, the original is gone and you can't get it back. Some will have versions and trash cans, which gives you some limited ability to restore.
Adguard Home has been absolutely rock solid for me, and it offers DoT and DoH servers so you can easily connect devices over those protocols if you want to.
You can do it with any router by manually configuring devices, but one that lets you advertise the PiHole IP as the DHCP DNS option makes it a lot easier.
Well one thing to point out is nextcloud and other sync programs are not backups, they're sync software.
But syncthing would work fine for keeping changes in sync between systems.
That seems like a rather critical feature to have missing!
Well whatever the equivalent is lol, I didn't see the last little line on the post.
apt autoremove will do it. Just double check what it's removing for obvious problems.
Do you need nextcloud? Its resource heavy and slow on the best of days.
So if not you could run syncthing plus a web based file browser, and immich or similar for photos.
Just wanted to point out that if your client is configured properly it won't have any connections while the VPN is down.
You don't absolutely need port forwarding to seed. As long as the other side has a port open you'll be able to upload to them.
Likely they were not allowed to by the terms they agreed to with apple.