Few weeks late to pitch in now but I can +1 docker-mailserver.

It has almost everything included and the configuration files are quite straightforward and flexible enough that you can drop little edits into the individual services if you need to tweak something.

My setup is very close to what you want: I use fetchmail to pull in from my old gmail and yahoo inboxes, I also have my own domain so I configured the MX records so that emails go straight to my server, with a fallback to my email provider (any mail that doesn’t make it directly to my mailserver will still get pulled into my inbox with fetchmail when it comes back online).

Docker-mailserver allows you to set the SMTP of your instance to use your provider. This is important because it means that they do all the reputation stuff so that your emails work properly (and both my home ISP and my VPS provider don’t do sending over pot 25 anyway).

So when I need to connect a new client (like Thunderbird) to my email I don’t need to manually config anything as docker-mailserver has all the auto config messages so its really seamless. At the same time my risk is low because even if my sever is off my provider will still receive anything on my behalf. I can only send using the username I have paid for from my provider and switching between gmail and yahoo is not possible without rewriting configs and restarting services but its not something I want anyway. On the receiving side I can have any number of aliased usernames that will all be received by my server (but only when its on so i use them rarely and for disposable addresses).

Big downsides are:

• backups are now my problem as I don’t keep duplicates.
• I route my traffic via a VPS+VPN to get a static public IP address - this was a headache to get all the little details just right but its stable now
• I have to host separately my own webmail, although I’m mostly using my phone with k-9 Mail and Thunderbird (I use roundcube)
• Getting server side filtering rules working was also annoying and so far I still have to add new rules through roundcube (there was a plugin for Thunderbird but I don’t want to open the additional ports required)
• !!! Spam !!! Docker-mailserver has a great Rspamd default settings out the box so its actually fine but now I have to manage all the additional rules and its not super intuitive especially because I am doing all this just for myself (yay!) but the tools are clearly meant for managing a fleet of inboxes so everything takes me longer to figure out
• integrating contacts is not included and might be important for your experience (again I was able to add this as a plugin to roundcube … eventually)

Most of my complaints stem from the fact that I’m not very good at this but in the end it has been very satisfying to drop the occasional: “I host my own email BTW”

Good luck! Let us know how you get along!

Thank you for the post, I do like reading what experts have to say about our digital privacy. I don’t like that many of these articles/discussions focus on specific choices that a user can make to gain more privacy. Please can we stop pretending that there is any alternative to WhatsApp. The network effect is why we use their platform not for any other reason. Its like advising someone to speak Fuzhou instead of Mandarin when in China, its not that its wrong to do so just that it is poor advice, or at the very least assumes that your priority is to speak Fuzhou over actually communicating with other people. The author says as much themselves: “Collective problems need collective solutions.” This is great! But shortly after we read: “Instead of using WhatsApp, use Signal.” groan + face-palm. I want to be positive and reiterate that I am happy that this is being debated at all.

YunoHost is trying to make it easier than a synology NAS to install services and get them setup properly but I agree that to configure your network properly is difficult and everyone’s setup is different so specific knowledge is required.

I really hope they do but I’m keeping my expectations realistic.

An open alternative to Apple/Google/Samsung pay seems impossible…

Was just trying to watch the original Star Wars from when I was young and found out that it is simply not available for sale. My money is no good! Then I found this Project 4K77.

+1 servarr It took me a while to navigate the (high) sea of information but eventually I got a setup I like. I started, like you say, just running qBit but found the search results limited and tedious to review manually. Get started with Prowlarr if nothing else. No need to jump in the deep end with everything all at once but once you see how it works you can add other components later.

Exactly!

I should have prefaced my situation better: I live in a country where the ISP censors certain websites and online services. The closest Linode is not on my continent (so the latency is noticeable). So my need to be connected to the Wireguard VPN really depends on what I’m doing. Having a split DNS system is seamless and I only activate the VPN manually as needed (both at home and when I’m out) Otherwise I would have just asked my ISP for a static IP, opened some ports and installed tailscale for everything else.

Thanks will take a look! Sad to hear you eventually gave up but I’m encouraged by the concept. It would make my current setup much simpler and is in keeping with my ethos that I want as much as possible done locally. The VPS should be no more than a piece of networking infrastructure.

spelling

I recently made the switch to Vaultwarden when I read a series of articles making predictions about passkeys and how they are lining up to replace passwords. Bitwarden apparently is ready to implement whatever standard becomes most popular and I had FOMO of being left behind if I stuck with keepass only. Previously I was using various keepass compatible apps and then syncing the KDBX database with my Nextcloud. (Vaultwarden is the selfhosted fork of Bitwarden)

Before you post a snappy “just do X” or “try this software” try it yourself consent-letter-2123.pdf my complaint is not trivial.

https://travel.gc.ca/docs/child/consent-letter-2123.pdf Open the form and try it yourself. What you are saying doesn’t work for this form. You need the scripts embedded in the form to create the final consent letter.

That just shows how dishonest Adobe is being. For example if a form was named “gov-form.xfa” instead of “gov-form.pdf” then my whole expectation would be different as it is obviously not a PDF and so I shouldn’t treat it as such.

Where you able to convert the form into an open format and also preserve all the original functionality? If this is true then there is absolutely no excuse for these forms not being offered in alternative formats. There are some tools that will let you ‘flatten’ an XFA form to a static PDF but this destroys all the dynamic parts of the original.

Feels very hostile right? I assume that all these smart XFA forms still have an online legacy dumb equivalent that is far less easy to use (both for the user and the government)

Adobe does sell licences for other companies to use the XFA format but even the software you linked has a free reader that pushes you to the paid full version. Also not FOSS.

I’m glad that not everyone is oblivious to my suffering! Thanks for the validation!

Also to your point about not having an issue with Firefox, I read that Firefox recently implemented an XFA reader in their browser but the issue is that most of the javascript is not supported so the functionality of the form is not guaranteed to work.