I ran a Debian nas with cockpit as the interface for a bit. Eventually stopped using cockpit and did most of what I needed from the terminal, just easier and quicker. Only used it for nfs shares, but you can use docker or podman no problem. The great thing about Debian is that it is barebones and easy to add exactly what you need and nothing else. There is nothing special you need to do other than install and set up the disk sharing of your choice. There are specific and special was to set certain things up, like zfs, but everything is usually well documented.