Shertson

For me:

• Card/CalDAV baikal : so that I can sync my calendar and address book across phone, tablet, workstation, and laptop
• Messaging prosody/synapse : private chatting with family.
• File sync Nextcloud : for access to various files. This is the only one that has worked consistently for me. Syncthing et al would constantly lose connection and the file I needed wouldn’t be there. Works fantastic for syncing Joplin notes.
• VPN wireguard : to access things remotely and securely
• Audiobooks audiobooksheld : I have a ridiculously large audio book library and enjoy listening to them when driving. This way I don’t have to preload my phone.
• Ebooks calibreweb : another large library. I have separate instances for different types: Magazines, regular books, RPG/gamebooks.
• Version control forgejo : for coding and creative writing projects.
• bookmarks shaarli : I find myself using this less and less. I use Firefox’s built-in sync, so I’m thinking about switching to separating selfhosting that instead of shaarli.
• Photos Synology : looking forward to immich getting stable. Once they get past regular breathing changes I’ll move over to that.

I have stopped using most of the services that got me into selfhosting. Things like rss and wikis. I try new things from time to time but kill them if I don’t find myself using them regularly or if the maintenance cost is more than the value add.

You should also be able to disable the repo from within the Software store app

If you have another USB drive, I think you should be able to load the wifi drivers from that when using the netinstall. I am pretty sure I remember doing that 15 years ago.