That ‘not have access to private messages’ is the complex thing that requires encryption done well. It is extremely complicated to make available to non technical people. No perfect solution presents itself.

Email is lowest common denominator ofc.

These are the things to study and learn. We are in a world where there are many mother tongues, moving to a world where there are many chat apps.

SimpleX

DeltaChat

Scuttlebutt

nix?

https://github.com/hackmdio/CodiMD for me is the genuine oss app with the real talent behind it and hedgedoc a controversial fork iterating on an older version

I hope NixOS gets added.

+1 for NixOS. My desire to have a reproduceable system got me to this and does just the job for me.

I like DeltaChat but FairEmail won out for me.

agreed, if I didn’t trust the encryption, I would not use it. I am fine with bitwarden hosting my encrypted passwords, the store is accessible locally on each device, and I can self host with vaultwarden if bitwarden pull the free service. The features in bitwarden are good and sufficient, less awkward than alternatives I have tried.

I use the lowest cost vps and domain name I can find. OVH black Friday deals and lcn free UK domains as a starting point and practice moving host and registrar so as not to be dependent on either. Only after you are independent of vendors is it worth taking this approach IMHO. Beware if you “forget” to renew your domain many sharks about will take it, gather your data or ransom the name.

https://gitlab.com/simple-nixos-mailserver/nixos-mailserver

cracked it for me

me too

Scuttlebutt?

Another suggestion to help on NixOs. There is quite some demand for what NixOs delivers so any work done should benefit from useful feedback.