Atomic automatic updates with snapshot creation? Maybe consider opensuse microOS if you are going headless…didn’t quite understand from your description. I have a VPS running microOS that has been doing its automatic updates/reboot thing for a year+ now without a single issue. Opensuse’s rolling stuff works very well, and you get native btrfs and snapper integration out of the box.
Easy to use reverse proxy - I really like Caddy. Reading/writing the config for that clicks better for me than others.
I like the novelty of using filesystem tools for backups, but can’t shake the feeling that tools like restic and borg are more widely deployed and battle tested.
Re reverse proxies, not exactly. Tried reading vanilla nginx configs and trying to understand nginx proxy manager, couldn’t grasp either. Also gave haproxy a shot.
I guess I don’t exactly understand the value of rebasing the core system. Small atomic core with snapshot-based rollbacks, with containerized beyond core stuff seems to get you 99% of the way there, no?