Just speaking for myself here, but as someone with only basic literacy in networking and almost zero prior experience with Linux or Docker, I found Unraid extremely straightforward to spin up–especially with the numerous guides floating around on Youtube. I started out with a used SFF PC that cost about $120 and a few drives I had lying around, and was up and running with basic NAS functionality in an afternoon.

I’ve mucked up a few things trying to do something more advanced without fully reading up, but I haven’t had a single hiccup with Unraid itself.

1.5 years later, and I’ve got ~80TB worth of refurb enterprise drives and hosting several media and other storage services, and I don’t see myself outgrowing it anytime soon.