You are more likely to lose sats running a node you don't know how to properly maintain than using a custodian.

People are running LN on toy computers running off SD cards that fail, with storage that isn't replicated, all on systems they aren't familiar with.

I've been using Linux for decades, and some aspects of my LN node still keep me up at night. What do these people that aren't devops experts do when their hard drive crashes, or some random service stops working, or their node partners crush them with force-closures fees?

Sorry, but running a full-ass lightning node is not for normies. Run a mobile node that handles most of the shit for you.