Design wise, they lack a feature that keeps me from using those products vs doing things myself... The ability to link services to external dependencies. Example, I install a Start9, and go to install a lightning node, but it needs to install Bitcoin core, even though I have 2 core nodes already running on my network, and don't need a 3rd one.
Discussion
Oh, interesting. I didn't know that was a problem. That's deff more of a power user kind of feature, but I get that the lack of flexibility would be frustrating.
If you knew your RPC user and password, something like that could be automated at setup.
It's definitely a power user feature, and it's a bit more complicated depending on what you're installing, it might need more external configuration for it to work beyond the rpc credentials.
But... Power users are a powerful target audience who may be more inclined to contribute back, if they're enabled to use these products more easily.
Yes I second this. I would prefer to have a dedicated Bitcoin core node running and then other services running on a separate box. That way rebooting say a lighting node wouldn't need to wait for Bitcoin core to shutdown and reinitialize which can take some time if you're using a high dbcache setting