Any good articles covering this setup? I was looking for a one stop solution for streaming and file management but it always seemed like many systems had to be combined or I had to pay other companies.

Just install nextcloud per the official docs, then install the addons you want from the admin interface. All are open source and free. That is literally it.

How's the upgrade story these days? Some years ago there were a lot of scary stories about upgrades going horribly wrong due to DB changes or otherwise being non-trivial.

Better, but just last week a test upgrade failed even using their own docker image and docker compose file.

Why? Because you can’t upgrade between major versions. If you do, part of the software is upgraded and the rest is not. Now you can’t go back either, because the persistent config directory has been modified in the process. There are countless posts in forums about failed upgrades (including this).

I have tried bare metal and docker, and the upgrades have failed once in a while. I am not sure if the snap version is any better.

Thanks, that's just the kind of stuff that keeps me away. Life is too short for such shenanigans.

Life is too short to put my data in the hands of third parties who will use it to target and manipulate me.

Democracies require more decisions from citizens than dictatorships but freedom is worth a bit of thinking once in a while.

Done several major version upgrades without issues. As long as you do one upgrade at a time and are not doing anything nonstandard it is smooth in my experience.