unfortunately i think start9 is without a good product market fit. highly technical users want to self host but want to control their stack not buy a pre made device. less technical users will be overwhelmed with start9 and generally should not self host due to constant tinkering and difficult user experience
disagree - thanks to start9 I was able to set up a full BTC node and lightning instance without ever having used a raspberry pi before, nor built an operating system from a github repo.
The instructions are great, and the parts are easy to obtain / put together. And cheap.
I'm no sysadmin but now I have a self hosted file server, mastodon instance, sphinx chat and more - all backed up on my own SSD device.
No google, no apple, no digital ocean, no AWS