I did the same as you. Fully nuked and started fresh in OH3. Recreated all my things, items, and js rules in the UI with no text files. I think the only text file in use is the persistence file for influxDB.
I love text files. But I love being able to modify configurations from somewhere other than sitting at my computer at home. I can be 1000 miles away and make config changes now very easily. I miss the text files because I could make changes really fast rather than clicking a bunch of menus. But the pros vs cons win for the main UI config.
I was never happy with habPanel. Just didn’t like the process for designing it and didn’t like interacting with it. It just rubbed me the wrong way. So I used sitemaps and basicui. This of course was very… basic… and had it’s very hard limits. I am really digging the OH3 main UI. Copy/pasting text YAML to keep a consistent layout probably helps with my like of it too. I’m making pages for wall mounted tablets, pages for my phone, pages for desktop, etc. If nothing else, it’s kept me occupied. I am no longer using sitemaps or basicui. I’ve been able to do everything I need in the Main UI, and I’m doing it way better than I was before. I am quite pleased.
I also found that numerous zwave devices that sucked in OH2.5 now work flawlessly in OH3. And these weren’t new devices either. My Linear garage door opener has been around for a while and sucked. Now everything works as it should in OH. I was pleasantly surprised by that little gift.
My only complaint / problem:
There remains to be a major performance problem with Rest API Auth in OpenHabian on Ras Pi devices. This makes logging in remotely through NGINX Basic Auth impossible, at least with NGINX in the recommended configuration. Multiple people have reported the problem with heaps of data and logs in forum posts and git issues.
The maintainer for OpenHabian says there is way to make it work fine, but is actually refusing to share it out of some strange spite. If I acted like this in the org where I am a maintainer, it would be completely unacceptable, and it would have been the end of my role as maintainer for sure. I’d report the post, but he’s the forum moderator too. If you’re suffering from this as many people are, you have my sympathy and I’ve tried.
Another community member wrote a fix for it and opened a PR, but it is not gaining any traction with the development team. As I’m a volunteer maintainer in another large org too, I get the volunteer thing and it’s not a criticism. It just is what it is when there isn’t a paid staff of developers waiting to fix every problem. Unfortunately, that means this problem is staying a problem for foreseeable future until something changes.
For the above reasons, I have abandoned OpenHabian on my pi and moved it to a Windows machine. This was surprisingly simple. Backup on the pi, restore backup on windows, like nothing happened. I moved influxDB and Grafana to Windows as well, also without a hitch. The rest auth performance issue does not have negative impacts on a hefty machine like this, so it is working much better. I still have issues where I need to clear cookies to log in, but at least it works.