I think the overlap of folks who want to self host and folks who don't already use a preferred Linux distro or Windows is quite small.
I'm imagining something like Synology NAS with it's apps [1], but with more user submitted services, and better connectivity between them. If Umbrel/Yunohost/Sandstorm/Cloudron released a pre-configured raspberry pi with some sane defaults, that could be a step in the right direction.
For something like a home server to take off it really needs to have that killer app. For most that would probably be something like Plex/Jellyfin, but your average user is just going to sign up for streaming services instead. And if a media server is all you want, Synology can take care of that pretty well. I recently moved my Plex server from a Mac mini (which I used in some form since Plex was first launched) over to a Synology NAS using Docker. Of course that’s not very user friendly, but assuming the native Plex app is better for the average Joe.
With so many cloud providers that make it easy to get to your data anywhere in the world via your laptop or phone, it’s hard to argue in favor of moving to home servers for much of anything. Sure, you can access it remotely if you set it up, but it’s going to be more hit and miss, and when things don’t work you’re just stuck hoping you can fix it.
Self hosting in 2022 is not exactly a walk in the park. Besides the obvious security risks of data loss/theft through exploits, you also have a challenge making anything as redundant as a cloud service.
Most major cloud services offer multi geographical redundancy, meaning if one data center completely vanishes (like the OVH fire), your data is safe in another data center, and hastily restoring redundancy to yet another data center.
You get versioning as well, i.e. OneDrive offers unlimited versions for 30 days, allowing you to roll back your entire account to a date 30 days in the past in case of malware attacks.
Add to that redundant hardware, power, internet, spare parts, physical access control, fire prevention and more.
On the other side of the fence, we have that old gaming PC that has been repurposed as a "home server", running Unraid, or slightly better TrueNAS in Raid-Z1, and not a backup in sight because "raid". Furthermore it probably hasn't been patched in months unless it defaults to auto updating.
I'm well aware that there are people that are serious about self hosting (i used to be one), but the above repurposed gaming PC is what you'll get in A LOT of the cases.
And to top it all off, with electricity prices in Europe as they are right now, the cloud is cheaper than running your own hardware, except of course for multi TB storage. A 4 bay Synology consuming 45W costs about €18/month in electricity alone, and a 60W server costs €23.5/month.
Maybe Umbrel could sell that as an extra -- you have an Umbrel box, it automatically sends an encrypted copy of your data to its servers.
45×24×30×0.2/1000=2.6$/month
45W for a month is 32.85 KWh (452430.4/1000), so i rounded up to 33 KWh.
Electricity where i live is currently averaging about €0.54/KWh, though this winter has seen prices as high as €1.14/KWh. Normal price is around €0.3.
33 * 0.54 = 17,8 ~= €18
The difference lies in electricity price.
Even with my favourite distro, being a sys-admin gets annoying after a while.