You’re last problem seem to be a network issue & was resolved, correct?
Forum support can be spotty as with any Linux project, people go on holiday, get swamped at work/don’t have the time to log in or maybe they’re just doing other things. Most of us are not officially affiliated and are just trying to help others out.
After using FB for awhile now, I still believe it is the most user friendly alternative out there. My first experience was positive & pretty straight forward; I’ve already posted about that.
The only real wait with the initial installation I experienced were the updates, which couldn’t be helped and it wasn’t excessively long (shorter than installing Windows updates on a new PC). I did have some downtime with the Debian upgrade, but that is to be expected with system upgrades.
I set up 2 new FB’s in August (2023) without any issues, going through switches and routers that I did not own/have admin access to. As with my previous FreedomBox installations, setup was again by the numbers & every application that we have used so far is working correctly. One was a refresh of an original device from Olimex and the other a decommissioned Windows PC, now running Debian with multiple hard-drives for work.
There’s complete documentation online for almost everything about this project and I love it; It helped me to ditch Apple, Icloud/Google drive & I am happy about that.
So here is a thank you to the maintainers and developers of this project, your work is appreciated.