I got sick of corporations forcing restrictions so looked into alternatives. Learned how to do it myself & haven't looked back:
Joplin notes - use this every day synced to multiple devices
Nextcloud - self hosted on a Raspberry Pi 4. Cloud storage plus syncs multiple stuff including Joplin
So many brilliant options on mobile:
OsmAnd+ (nav), Antennapod (podcasts), Keepass (password manager), Obtainium (app updater). Was also enjoying Fritter/Quacker (Twitter without needing an account) until Elons recent meltdown. Also enjoying Liftoff lemmy app for Android
EDIT: hot off the press. For those interested, Quacker is back in the game. Not had chance to check Fritter yet
Yeah I just use a HDD. On the whole its pretty stable though through tinkering Ive managed to crash my setup a few times. Sometimes restarting the Nextcloud Docker container is enough (Portainer makes it simple), when i really break it i start from scratch. I use a simple script to automaticacally back up all my data to another drive weekly