I think this is very well said. For me, the appeal of Nethserver continues to be the community. I’ve never seen a product that receives the level of support one can easily access on these forums.
That said, it does feel like we have the worst of both worlds in the sense that we must learn a new, and fairly limited gui interface, while also charting out manual configurations which are often esoteric in their defiance of convention. A recent example in an area where I have enough familiarity to speak a little:
One would expect to adjust php.ini settings in the php.ini file somewhere in etc – this is complicated of course by containerization. However, the actual values in the newly minted (and AMAZING!) wordpress module are buried /home/wordpress1/.config/state/config/uploads.ini – a place no one will ever find them without reading the forum post which tells you where to look.
I remain extremely grateful for the product and the incredible people that help me find my stumbling way with it, but agree with you that it can be very difficult to know how to get from A->B without someone drawing you a detailed (and personalized) map.