In my experience, unattended Linux installs tend to rot pretty badly. They're fine for a while, then either some update goes badly wrong (usually of the "well, we expected you to go from v4 to v5, but we never tested v2 to v5" variety, far down some dependency chain) and requires heroic skills to recover; or the system just point-blank refuses to update after a while, again requiring heroic skills to recover. FreeBSD has been better for me once running, but requires more work for initial setup.

So, no, my experience is that unattended Linux is not really suitable. Your experience may vary.

What I want is something that's more like an appliance than a project. You do not look at your toaster every day and wonder if it needs to perform updates. Or your washing machine. (If you do, please, seek help.) These are appliances. I want an appliance that serves me bits, lots of them, and lets me use multiple machines without caring too much which one has which file. My Synology has, to date, been excellent at that role.

> either some update goes badly wrong [...] or the system just point-blank refuses to update

You don't understand, in that post I'm talking about purposefully not updating. At all. Updates can't go wrong if they don't happen. If it refuses to update then you win.

> What I want is something that's more like an appliance

Yeah, you get it! Set it up and then leave it alone.

And don't expose it to the internet.