I think I found the answer to myself. Gemini helped me out understand I was thinking wrong.
So basically ZimaOS is designed to be a single user system when managing apps, so only one admin, and that one admin installs and manages apps.
Other users can have access to a their own home folder as a samba service, and can use the apps, mostly the ones that support multiple users by themselves like, immich, nextcloud, etc. so the ZimaOS UI that creates new users is mostly, if not only, for SMB services.
So, since I was coming from DSM which every user can have granted specific privileges and can install their own apps I was thinking ZimaOS could too, this is the reason when I log in as another user I couldn’t have access to the hard drives and apps and I recieved the “permission denied” error, only the admin can.
So since I’m the only one in the family who really plays around with the apps I made my account the admin directly and my family members will have access to file storage managed by nextcloud and photo archive by immich, just my wife needs access to a folder as smb to make the Time Machine backups from her Mac. There is no point in logging into the server, I mean on the dashboard, as a user, the “permission denied” error will always be there
Can anyone correct me if I’m wrong?
I still have to try out the samba connection though, because, from the ZimaOS UI, from the folder “Manage samba share” option, when I copy and paste the windows explorer path it can’t find it on Windows, but that problem is for another time.
I’ve got to say, I was sold on this OS for the simplicity and many reccomend it for home use and friendliness but so far I’ve fund little friendliness. What a headache! Almost a month working on it and I still cannot reccomend my family to put their stuff in it.