linuxoveruser

The purpose of having a web-based user interface is to enable remote installation using a web-browser, which I imagine could be a pretty common use-case for server installation. Since a web-based interface is necessary for remote installation, it makes sense to use the same interface locally instead of having two independent interfaces.

Nix is probably the best way to get all of those things set up without shipping a whole distro, but there will be a bit of a learning curve. If you’d like something a bit easier to set up for development (still based on Nix), I’d recommend devenv.sh.

Maybe Discourse? The mobile website is pretty good and there are also a number of third-party mobile apps.

Check out Lychee. It’s designed for (semi) public photo galleries more like Flickr