GottaHaveFaith

Lenovo Legion. If you pick a configurable one and remove windows they’ll lower the price accordingly (sometimes 100€ for windows pro). Some models offer Linux pre-installed.

Steam did an amazing job on the controller management, you can already remap everything. Disabling track pads should be easy

Dumb idea: if the configuration is on a file, you can make it immutable. Something with chattr +i can’t remember. I take no responsibility if your server catches fire, and you may have to manually set the flag on and off if you want to add new media/change settings. It may be more complicated if everything is inside a “full” sql db

As for the rest, either start jellyfin at boot or a custom launcher or kodi. I don’t know if plasmashell is still working, it can probably be configured to only show the correct stuff. There are also custom launchers for android tv

Looks really nice! Thought it was a terraria clone at first, will check out the reviews

Edit: bought it since it’s 75% off, played around 2 hours, it’s pretty entertaining, I’m not a super fan of this kind of turn based combat in general, but we’ll see

I think most selfhosters already know/use Linux, so management issues are already known. About the ease of use, if you manage services with docker it’s really easy to bring them up/down, and if you want some GUI there’s portainer.