Why not just cd $XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR in the first place?

did you mean smuts?

I plan to try the OpenMediaVault first. For my use - a lot less for services and dynamic changes and a lot more for sitting in the closet quietly - it’s good enough. And I can still dig into the internals if I wanted to.

And with OMV I can also teach my non-techy wife and kids how to add themselves more disk space :)