@neil I saw a friendly looking pigeon on the neighbours' roof last week..?

@welshpixie @neil Can't beat RFC 2549

@welshpixie @neil
Good old RFC1149
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149

@neil

I buy used laptops on eBay. They are surprisingly good value 🙂

@neil for paid providers Migadu is great if you don’t mind bringing your own domain, otherwise no idea either

@neil

Mine is called "postfix" and "devecot", runs on a used #thinkcentre I bought for 50€ ...

@neil I do.

@beasts

Happy to help. 😃

@neil I know this feeling! I get asked what cloudy providers I recommend, what WiFi mesh or router, what windows laptop, what prebuilt gaming PC, what IoT stuff, how to fix Windows issues, etc…

I genuinely don’t know what to say other than “I don’t know!”

@HighlandLawyer @welshpixie @neil

I love those RFCs :)

@neil mythic beasts are my default answer these days.

@prl @neil @beasts Yeah +1 for Mythic Beasts.

@neil depends what you want.

After getting annoyed with tutas spam filtering I’ve been playing with forwardemail.net

However for my main domain I route incoming mail through mxguarddog first because my email is well leaked and on tons of spam lists.

Both US based entities tho

@neil the thing is it’s not something where most of us try out loads of options either. I can tell you we tried and didn’t go with fastmail 5 years ago because they simply wouldn’t send email for your first month other than once a day (measure against spamming), but I couldn’t be doing with waiting a month to send email when I clicked go. But as to whether that still applies… 🤷‍♀️. FWIW been with runbox ever since.

@neil the thing is, the system I use to publish my blog is really good and easy to use if you are familiar with my own personal collection of idiosyncratic tools, and is really lightweight and secure on the server; but it isn't suitable for the average person. You can say all the rude things you like about Wordpress, but ordinary mortals can use it.

@neil coincidentally I was just reading your £50 lenovo blog post and thinking of doing similar. Is it still going?

My work provide me with a beefy machine, but for my personal life my needs are minimal.

@mini @neil "I don't know, I use good software."

@simonzerafa @neil Old ThinkPads are amazing value in the current era of "everything is priced as if our last name is Musk".

@simon_brooke @neil
> You can say all the rude things you like about Wordpress, but ordinary mortals can use it.

I seem unable to get the point across to devs/techies that the rest of us don't need another web dev framework, we need more normie CMSs for people like myself and @JenJen who want to spend as little time as possible setting up a site with a blog, a nice theme, a gallery, a membership option, and an e-com shop, but still want to self-host and have some proper control over our data.

@neil yeah, I'm weighing up spending £50 or £300 (likely a T14) at the moment. Like you I would stick Debian on it.

@twp @neil I can’t find your Lenovo post but any advice on accessing a used tablet would be appreciated.

@feff @simon_brooke @neil dunno what this is a reply to, but I am nodding enthusiastically

@neil @Billie I run postfix+dovecot myself, but I'm also watching Stalwart with interest. It's still a complicated piece of software, but approaching the "I can copy and paste commands into the terminal" levels of Linux knowledge rather than "I know port numbers and FHS paths off by heart" needed for other email software.

When it comes to fully managed email providers, I am also completely lost. I use GMX as a secondary email inbox, which is just about tolerable when using Thunderbird rather than their own webmail, but I wouldn't say it's a truly good experience.

@seabass @neil @Billie I wouldn’t touch Stalwart with a 3-metre pole since they started violating the AGPL:

First, there was a “rug pull” relicense 3 months ago moving from AGPL to mixed licensing with some code now non-free. This relicensing contravenes the terms of the CLA that the project signed with contributors (the FLA 2.0, equivalent to this one). The terms of the CLA allow any contributor to terminate the agreement if there is a breach, meaning that there is an ongoing threat to Stalwart’s rights to distribute the project - and therefore ours as well, so long as we ship non-free code, even if they change their license agreement to allow it.

I use OpenSMTPd and Dovecot. OpenSMTPd is simpler to configure than Postfix, but Dovecot annoyingly changed their configuration format (such that I’d have to redo the configuration) which is why I’m still on Debian oldstable.

I wouldn’t touch Stalwart with a 3-metre pole since they started violating the AGPL

Ugh, why do projects keep doing this? 😫 Thanks for letting me know, @noisytoot

@neil @Billie