Haven’t read so can’t tell you but you will find info at https://leminal.space/post/11699480

I have used darktable, but doesn’t seem to fill your need as it is more a lightroom replacement than Photoshop https://www.darktable.org/

Home assistant has a voice assistant but it isn’t a voice assistant. Also, you are correct it is made to control a smart home (at the moment) that also include music threw external provider (or local files) but you can’t search the internet threw it. You can either install it locally or pay for home assistant subscription which include voice assistant threw cloud.

I’m not 100% sure but this might also depend which OS you are running on your pi. Did change from SD card to SSD few years back for my home assistant setup (now running with a mini pc) at the time I went for a geekpi adapter (can’t recall exact model).

Try a quick ducduck search “sata adapter #yourOS#” and see if a list come up. Here is one for HA (but surely more models are compatible than the ones listed here) https://community.home-assistant.io/t/working-usb-enclosures-and-adapters-with-hassos/212763

Edit: as for SSD, I went for Samsung EVO model

Sidenote: all SSD will be more reliable than a sd card because they are less sensitive to rewrite counts

I don’t see why you think those are web based, usually people run this at home but glad you find what you are looking for

As far as photo librabry, you can compare the different solutions at https://github.com/meichthys/foss_photo_libraries

Redlib ?

Relying on 4 nvme drive for low power isn’t ideal as nvme drive needs about twice more power compare to sata SSD.

If I were you, I would try to disable some/all of the image features your TV has in settings. Could be those settings that create soap opera effect.

I’m not 100% sure but I have always read that playing movie at higher frame rate than source doesn’t make video looking better. To get best results, it is adviced to have your screen frame rate matching the one from source. That being said, can’t tell you how to achieve this on linux since I only watch stuff on TV using shield TV as a player.

If z2m, zwavejs,… Are installed from the adon store of HA, all you have to do is create a full backup of HA, and all your automations will be saved and restored automatically.