+1 for starting out with Proxmox! I’m about to switch my main server over to it, and I wish I started out using it. I’ve played around with it for a while on a second server, and being able to use snapshots and Proxmox backups from the start would’ve saved me so much time.

Think about how many people have a Synology NAS; it’s close to what you’re describing, but it’s still a relatively niche product. People simply don’t care enough. What you’re describing could definitely work, but only once people start caring about this.

It’s always DNS lol

“Quite within the realm of someone who’s got some computer skills” means “inaccessible to most people”. I don’t mean to sound like an ass about it, but most people just don’t care enough about this stuff to invest even a bit of time in it (nevermind the upfront cost for a Synology or Qnap NAS).

Realistically, the best solution is hosted and managed versions of FOSS apps where the private data is encrypted. Most people just don’t want to manage a server, and this solution would provide funding to FOSS projects while also increasing data sovereignty for non-self hosters.

As much as we all might want it to, self hosting will never be mainstream.

Why not exclude the folder you want to move from the initial sync, and sync that folder separately to the final location?

Aren’t SUSE the good guys insomuch such a thing exists?

You can mount the complete backup as a local file system, which I think would suit your needs. I’m not familiar with their various integrations either, I just backup over SFTP.

But to reassure you, I also needed a bit of trial and error with Kopia, as it’s not the easiest GUI ever to get used to. But I’ve got it running now, and I’m very happy with it. I’ve also used it to successfully restore multiple backups (to test if it worked) and they all worked.

You should be able to achieve this with Kopia

What are you trying to achieve, OP? As far as I understand you want to use Nextcloud to sync your photos and then want to use Immich to view them?

Because if that’s the case, it doesn’t make the most sense currently. Immich currently isn’t a full featured photo library manager, but rather a tool to back up photos from your phone and smartly display those. It’s currently not geared toward at displaying existing photo libraries.

A number of other applications (PhotoPrism, Photoview, LibrePhotos, Piwigo) are better suited to do that, although it is planned for Immich if I understood correctly.

Nextcloud uses a normal file structure per user, so you could also point any other gallery app (PhotoPrism, Photoview, LibrePhotos, Piwigo) towards the data folder Nextcloud uses. And yeah, Memories is an option as well.