Earlier quoted context omitted.
Truenas (linux) has been like that for me. Repurposed my last pc, added a pci-e sas/sata card, add 8 hdd's. Installed it 2 years ago and its been auto updating and i have been hardly having to deal with it, at most an hour a month to check the status and maybe add or remove some docker container stuff thats running on there.
An hour a month + some docker shenanigans I don't understand? Your sales pitch started out so good and then - anxiety spiking for me. :-D
There’s no need to proactively check in on anything if you’ve set up email alerts. It’s pretty straightforward to give the NAS permission to send you emails in case a drive dies on you rather than failing silently.
Docker containers are just a nice bonus. You don’t need to use them if you don’t want to, but it is awfully convenient to run things like media encoders, torrent clients, download managers, etc. directly on your storage.