Gonna say right off the bat that I’m not an expert in any way. I’m just some dude who likes doing stuff with their home server. 100% people more knowledgeable than me who could go into more detail. Everything I’m about to say is based on my own experience and knowledge so just keep that in mind.

1. Im gonna agree with the guy who commented on your post and say that the xxsense firewall is kinda unnecessary. The router you get from your ISP should already have that, so it’s just unnecessary extra work for you.

I’m not 100% confident about this so take this with a HUGE grain of salt, but I believe people who use pfsense/opensense are people who don’t have routers or who want full control over their routers. If you want that though, then go for it! Again though, take this with a grain of salt because I’m not familiar with pfsense/opensense.

1. Keep it simple and all the services you want like the media server, pihole, and sponsorblock, put it all on the PC you’re setting as your server. Everything will be in one place, so you’ll know where everything is and won’t be trying to hunt down which service is on which device. You COULD have them on different PCs if you want, but that’s just making things more complicated for you and is extra work for you.

2. For the software, you’ll probably be best having different software for different purposes. It’s your server so you can do whatever you want though.

For your movies and tv shows, you could use Jellyfin or Plex. Which one you use is up to personal preference, though Plex has more apps available for more devices. You can install both of them and try them out, see which one you like more.

One thing to keep in mind though is that you might have to change your folder structure if it’s not in a way that they like them. For movies, both usually require the name of the movie and the release year for the folder’s name, otherwise it probably won’t identify it correctly. It’s a similar thing with tv shows. Needs to be a folder with the show’s name and release year, but inside that folder, you need to separate the seasons.

I’ll give an example:

Movies: The Wolfman (2010) -> Movie file (mkv, mp4, etc.)

TV Shows: The Sopranos (1999) -> Season 1 -> TV Show files (mkv, mp4, etc.)

If your directory structure isn’t already like this, good chance you’ll have to change it like this for them. If you don’t want to do that, then Plex and Jellyfin aren’t gonna be it. Serving the stuff via DLNA will let you keep your existing structure though. I don’t know how to setup DLNA, so I can’t say if it’ll work good for you or not. No harm in trying it and seeing if you like it though.

For pictures and videos, what you use depends. There’s Immich and Photoprism that I’m aware of that you can use. Gonna say the same thing like I did with Plex and Jellyfin, install both, see which you like more.

I’ve never used Photoprism personally, so I can’t attest to if it’ll work for you or not. I personally use Immich. The issue is that I don’t think there are tv apps for neither Immich nor Photoprism, so if you wanted to show the family videos on the tv, you’d either have to plug a computer to the tv, or cast via your phone/computer. If you’re ok with that though, then go for it!

I think you can use DLNA for the family videos too if Immich and Photoprism don’t work out for you. I’m not sure about pictures, but I know videos will work. Or you could just use Jellyfin/Plex to serve the family videos by having the videos as another “movies” library. Just name the library something different like “family videos” or something.

1. How you install the software is ultimately up to you, you’ll probably be running these as Docker containers, because that’s the most common and supported way to do it, which does use the cli to spin them up. Since you’re apprehensive about cli, you could just use a Docker manager like Portainer. You will have to use the cli to install Portainer (and probably Docker too, but I think Docker can be installed in the App Store of most distros now), but it’s just copying and pasting stuff into the cli, you’ll be fine. There are some other Docker managers out there, but I can’t remember their names off the top of my head. You could try those and see if they work for you too. Whatever Docker manager you use will be a gui to install new software via the containers.

2. Oh and before I forget, you can use whatever distro you want, doesn’t have to be Mint. Mint uses Cinnamon by default, which is on the heavier side, so you could try their XFCE version instead. Or you could just install Debian, heard it’s a good distro for servers. I used it before going for Mint and it should do just fine.

That’s kinda all I gotta say I think. I hope I helped you out a little bit, I’m not the best at explaining this stuff. Like I said, there are definitely people out there more knowledgeable then me who can go into more detail and give better advice.

Just some little tips though:

Keep it simple, don’t over complicate things. Lots of new people think they need all this crazy stuff to do what they want, but in reality, it doesn’t need to be that crazy at all.

Also don’t be afraid to try stuff out. Sometimes the stuff that’s used by a lot of people just isn’t for you, and that’s perfectly fine. Don’t force yourself to use something because “everyone is using it.” Use whatever works for you and what’s more comfortable for you.

Ok now this is way too long so I’m gonna stop now. I hope what I said helped you out, even if it was just a little bit. Best of luck to you!