Encryption has very little overhead; modern CPUs have hardware acceleration for all the common algorithms. What are you doing that’s so performance constrained you can’t tolerate even that?

Bootable thumb drive with a persistent OS installed and preconfigured?

It’s a lot more painful if you don’t know what you’re doing and disregard good advice.

Well then maybe you should also pass on making generalizations about selfhosting?

…… am i a container bro?

You’ll want to learn some database administration before you attempt this. Simpler to just give them all their own instance.

That’s correct! I can share my docker-compose if that’s helpful. I’m on my phone, but I believe they just have to share a volume.

To clarify, calibre-web is not “the docker version of calibre”, it’s a separate project that provides a nice web frontend for an existing calibre database.