tvcvt

Fascinating—I didn't know that one! I'm definitely going to have to read the manual for that.

I think it’s just a matter of getting used to it. I had the same issue at first and the more I used the command line, the more I started to prefer it to GUI apps for certain tasks.

A couple things that I use all the time:

• tab completion is incredible
• cd - goes back to the last directory you were in (useful for bouncing back and forth between locations)
• !$ means the last argument. So if you ls ~/Downloads and then decide you want to go there, you can cd !$.
• :h removes the last piece of a path. So I can do vim /etc/network/interfaces and then cd !$:h will take me to /etc/network.

Another option that’s pretty much perfect as long as you don’t need to provide remote support for macs is Remotely (https://github.com/immense/Remotely). You can selfhost it and it works kind of like teamviewer, so pretty simple from the client standpoint.

This promises to be a fun project!

It sounds to me like you have above-average demands on your network and I’d agree that UniFi (and therefore probably Omada) are not what I’d consider great as routers/firewalls.

I’m a fan of pfSense/OPNSense for that purpose, which you can install on pretty much any x86_64 hardware. They’re both wonderful and you can fine tune to your heart’s content or get them set the way you like and leave them.

If you really like a dedicated router appliance, I do like the Mikrotiks, too, but you’d have to study their sometimes-peculiar way of doing things.

To my tastes, UniFi does great at switching and wireless, but any of you’re unhappy with that direction, I’ve heard good things about Omada and the Aruba stuff is fantastic. I recently have been playing with some used iap-325s from eBay. I picked them up for $25 and they’ve been terrific.

I run my home firewall on an old thin client (an HP t730, if I remember right). That does the job well and is about comparable to a laptop (minus the screen) for power consumption.

Another more current option that sounds good is the Zimaboard. I haven’t touched one, but people are seemingly going nuts over it. It’s a little x86 single board computer (about Raspberry pi size) with two gigabit NICs.

I think what you’re describing can be accomplished with docker-compose’s depends_on option. I’m not certain how it works across compose files, but that would be the first place I’d look.