How can we live life outside bigtech ecosystems, except for self hosting?

I've no arguments against this. It'd be terribly hypocritical on account of where we're having this discussion, as well as why we're both here. I obviously also have an interest in self-hosting. That said, I do think that installing containers is just a fairly small part of the whole, and quite different from running a plug-and-play OS like Linux Mint. There's also the troubleshooting, and networking nonsense, and hands-on migrations when something big changes.

There's self-hosted software out there I don't want to self host because it's just too much work. For example I use a Hetzner managed instance of NextCloud to replace Google Drive, and that still required me to set up and configure Collabora in a container and make those two play nice.

You know your partner best yourself, if you think they're ready for this and that this is something that they'd appreciate then go for it. The "uninterested in software" bit would have me a bit hesitant. They might appreciate it, but say you break up down the line, what happens then?

I used to date this guy who always had trouble with his computer. I'd come over and help troubleshoot, fix things up. Eventually he got some spare cash and decided he wanted a new computer. I suggested we put together a custom one. We've since broken up, but he still asks for help with his computers from time to time. We're still good friends - jag tror att det är relativt vanligt här i Norden, vi brukar inte vara så explosivt dramatiska - so I don't have a problem with it.

It's really sweet that you want to give your partner a slice of freedom, and had I been your partner I'd be very appreciative. You do risk kind of giving them a bunch of labour that they're not very interested in. Like I said though, you know your partner best yourself.