I do it. Postfix+dovecot+spamassassin managed with ISPConfig running on a VPS. Works just fine, but my domains already have a long-ish good reputation so that may play a part on my experience. Biggest headache is to keep things running, which occasionally means jumping trough hoops microsoft(mostly) and others throw at you by flagging your server as spam for no apparent reason.
It’s quite likely that any given IP, unless you get one from shady VPS provider or something, is “clean”. And if it’s not it’s usually not that big of a deal to get it cleared from major blacklists (spamhaus, google and microsoft covers quite a lot). You just need to dig up proper forms to tell them that you’re a new owner of said IP and promise to play nice.
Same goes with domain names, but if you get a new one that’s a non-issue. Just set up SPF-records properly (and preferably DKIM/DMARC, but those aren’t strictly necessary and need a bit more than a single TXT-record) and you’re good to go.
And then you of course need to stay away from those lists. If you configure your SMTP to act as a open proxy you’ll be on every shitlist on the planet pretty quickly. So, reasonable measures against compromised account (passwords, firewalls, rate limits…) and against other threats (misconfigured/unsafe web service used for spam and stuff like that). Any of those alone are not too difficult to accomplish, but there’s quite a few things you need to get right.
Maybe easier to get anything runnin quickly. But it obfuscates a lot of things and creates additional layer of stuff which you need to then manage. Like few days ago there was discussion about how docker, by default, creates rules which bypass the “normal” INPUT rules on many (most?) implementations. And backup scenario is different, it’s not as straightforward to change configuration than with traditional daemon and it’s even more likely to accidentally delete your data as a whole.
As I already said, docker has its uses, but when you’re messing around and learning a new system you first need to learn how to manage the ropes with docker and only after that you can mess around with the actual thing you’re interested of. And also what I personally don’t really like is the mindset that you can just throw something on a docker and leave it running without any concern which is often promoted with ‘quickstart’-type documentation.
You absolutely can run services without containers and when learning and trying things out I’d say it’s even preferable. Docker is a whole another beast to manage and has a learning curve of it’s own.
Containers can of course be useful but setting everything up, configuring networking, managing possible integrations with other components (for example authentication via LDAP) it’s often simpler just to run the thing “in traditional way”. With radicale you can just ‘apt install radicale’ (or whatever you’re using) and have a go with it without extra layer of stuff you need to learn before getting something out of the thing. And even on production setups it might be preferred approach to go with ‘bare metal’, but that depends on quite a few variables.
On residential connections it’s a bit pain in the rear, but if you get VPS (or something similar) it’s perfectly manageable. You just need to maintain stuff properly, like having proper DNS records, and occasionally clear false positives from spam lists. The bigger issue is to have proper backups and precautions, I’ve hosted my own emails for over 10 years and should I lose all the data and ability to receive new messages it would be a massive personal problem.
Dad of 4 kids here, I would say use the system that let you concentrate more on the kid and less on tinkering the OS.
Dad of 3 here with 20something years on Linux already. This is the correct answer. Just go for win11 if that’s the simplest route for you, Linux will be there once you have the capacity to learn it. With a new baby you’ll be exhausted, you have a crapload (sometimes quite literally) new things to learn already and you just won’t have the time to do all the things you used to (as you already know). Making things more challenging for you by switching to something completely new just eats the very little time you have for yourself.
My work laptop has 11 running on it and it’s good enough. OS on that thing is not my call anyways, but at least on my workload it gets the job done.
You’re correct. All packages installed via dpkg/apt are on that list. What isn’t included are appimages, flatpacks, snaps and other non-dpkg software if you happen to have any.
And setting permissions on directories get’s them inherited by newly created/added files in there, right?
No. They’re created based on ‘umask’ and changing directory permissions doesn’t automatically change permissions on underlying files (unless you set privileges recursively) nor new files in the directory.
So how can i remove the ability from my homedir to execute current and new files but keep the traverse permission?
For new files set your umask on what you want. By default it’s usually either 0002 or 0022. For existing files you can use find: find ~ -type f -exec echo chmod a-x {} \; (remove echo once you’ve confirmed that it does what you want).
big begginer distros
I wouldn’t say that Mint is a ‘beginner’ distro. Sure, it’s beginner friendly, but it’s equally friendly for everyone. I’ve been a linux user for “a while” and currently I prefer Mint on my workstations. It offers me everything I need from a distro in a neat package and as I’ve been a Debian user since Potato it’s a familiar environment.
But if OP want’s somehting “more linux-y” then good old Debian should do the trick. Basically anything with decently long history besides Ubuntu (in it’s current state) will do just fine.
Obviously we’re talking about hobbyist level stuff and with that there’s always something what can go wrong and it’s not always obvious what it is. So if the ‘remote end’ doesn’t have someone who can do at least very basic troubleshooting it can be nearly impossible to fix the setup over the phone unless you just replace the whole thing and ship whole units back and forth.
But in this particular case the remote end has someone who knows their stuff so it’s taken care of, with or without a KVM. I’ve been thinking a similar setup with my relatives and on my case the distance isn’t an issue but it’s still something I’d need to bother family members with and, for me, it was simpler to get a storage box from hetzner and run backups to that instead of getting more hardware.
Maintenance is anyways something you need to consider and viable options for that vary on a case-by-case basis, so there’s no ‘one size fits all’ solution.
It won’t help if your power supply breaks and KVM itself can malfunction too. It’s of course nice to have, but it has limitations.
I would consider also the case where something goes wrong. Maybe the whole thing crashes, maybe you misconfigure something, maybe there’s a power outage or something else happens and you lose the connectivity. Is there someone on site who can do anything to your hardware as you can’t easily just go and figure it out by yourself?
If the answer is ‘no’ then I would strongy reconsider the whole approach. On a worst case scenario the system goes down before you’re even back home from the trip and then your hardware is just gathering dust.
I think what just_another_person means that Lenovo, specially at the beginning when they got the Think-brand from IBM years ago, tried to ride the brand and released sub-par laptops under ThinkPad -brand. At least some of the L-series were closer to what you could get from your local supermarket than actual work machines.
The brand-riding is now greatly less and the crappy ones generally aren’t the models you can find refurbished from 3rd party retailer. I’m currently using T495 and it was ~300€ from a sale couple years ago, now you apparently can get L13 for less than that. And of course, when you buy used units do your homework and only make deal with a reputable seller, there’s always an option that previous owner didn’t treat the thing nicely.
The generic answer for this is to get a refurbished thinkpad. Pretty much any T-series fit your needs and there’s plenty of pre-leased corporate machines around which are refurbished and often have even a some kind of warranty.
I somewhat agree on your comment about documentation and UI (altough once you get used to it, it’s manageable) but just to add with my experience on these things: for me they’ve been rock solid. I’ve used them both at home and professionally (mostly on small-ish networks) for at least 10 years and they just seem to run just fine.
Currently my home router is RB4011iGS+ and there’s been absolutely no problems with it in the 4-5 years it’s been on my network. I’m not saying all their models are as reliable and there’s not that many models I’ve had my hands on, but my experience with them has so far been pretty good.
You’ll get used to it eventually
I’ve been earning my living mostly with connecting to remote systems via ssh (and other means) for quite a few years and I still occasionally mess up and enter commands on a wrong terminal. Less now than I used to, but it still happens. The trick is to learn youself to pause for a second and confirm the target for any potentially destructive or otherwise harmful command, no matter if it’s locally or to some server other side of the world.
Are all the distros having the same GNU/Linux kernel
Yes. Different distros have different versions, patches and so on, but the underlying kernel is the same.
if I replace all the Arch userland files into Debian’s, the system will become Debian?
If by “userland” you mean files which your normal non-root user can touch, then no. There’s differences on how distributions build directory trees, file locations, binaries, versions and so on. You can of course replace all the files on the system and change distribution that way, a convenient way to do that is to use distros installer but technically speaking you can also replace them manually by hand (which I don’t recommend).
Do they really care enough to check your info manually if you don’t use your domain name for malicious purposes?
Depends on TLD how strict the checks are, but generally you’re at least violating TOS by doing it and can lose your domain should someone actually check the info. A lot of registrars provide at least whois-security, so they’ll know your real details but won’t share them openly to anyone who asks. I assume if you get into something illegal and court orders to release the data then they’ll happily comply instead of hurting their own business.
But if you just want to keep your real name and address out of the internet, that would be enough at least for me.
Ubiquiti
And they too aggressively push their cloud services and at least some point their management tool gave you ads on their other products.
Since no one has yet mentioned, by default if you’re running tar as a non-root user it extracts files with owner/umask of the current user and if you run it as root (or superuser) it’ll preserve ownership and permissions. From tar man page:
As mentioned, with root the defaults are to keep UID/permissions as they are in the archive. (–preserve-permissions and --same-owner).