It sounds strange maybe,but I found Zabbix way easier for these scenarios. For more advanced deployments it is different,but for what you describe it is really easy

They set up a business. They do business. They should ask someone to do this whose business it is. Not you. They are taking advantage of you.

You will certainly and 100% ruin your friendship with them.

• Keeping a server secure is an ordeal for a professional - especially when it comes to using it as a business server.

• Doing E-Mail yourself, especially in a professional capacity, is a god damn nightmare and even most professionals refuse to do it and rather pay someone who handle it. For a reason.

• The usecase you mentioned does not require a server. It can easily be done via a web hosting provider. Unless there is something shaddy going on and you/they are afraid of storing that stuff with a provider. But for what you mention here you need a simple web hosting provider for 5 bucks a month.

• Actually doing that yourself is far more complicated than you imagine here. It’s not just the server. How do you get a connection with a static IPv4 to host your services? Actually preferably multiple static IPs? Are you considering a CloudFlare tunnel? How do you plan redundancy if that connection craps out? Or the server kicks the bucket. Or power goes out? This alone costs FAR more than the money you pay for a cheap webhoster or even a VPS. (Which you don’t need,imho)

For the love of god or whoever: Don’t do that. You will be liable/responsible to them (at least from their point of view) if their IP is on Googlemails blacklist and now “that one important client mail did not arrive in time”. Or if the cheap residential DSL craps out and their very important site is just having the sale of their life?

I am absolutely for self-hosting things, don’t get me wrong. I selfhost basically everything (but no mail…that is a shitshow), mostly on FOSS. But don’t start with someone else’s business if you start doing this. Selfhost a few easy things. Get a Mini PC and proxmox, selfhost within your home network, then expand slowly.

OPNsense on any small scale dual LAN box, either a used mini PC or a purpose made one.

Any company allowing the unregulated use of these on their devices has a information protection and most likely also an IT security problem. Even more valid for any government security or law enforcement organisation.

BTW: GDPR prohibits this in the EU.

And before OpenOffice there was Star Office.

Now I feel old.

Especially as I also remember when I used to write with Lotus Word Pro.

Or pirate radio it and make people think it’s a new number station. Then someone will surely put it on YouTube so you can listen to it there.

I must actually revoke my statement,it seems like it is now being revived and is developed again, at a much slower pace,though.

But much better than nothing and at least security updates seem to be working.

Sorry for the misinformation, my bad, the different sources are quite misleading sometimes.

And sadly MeshCentral is pretty much death development wise, isn’t it? The main dev left Intel and now has not enough time for the project, wasn’t that the story?

Edit: it seems to be developed again, much slower,though. But better than nothing.

OF was generally a masterpiece that nowadays is often forgotten.

The massive conquer the island battles alone, often taking more than 12,sometimes more than 24h were epic for the time.

And this ladies and gentlemen is what is wrong with Linux and its communities.

Technological gatekeeping is THE major problem in the Linux world. You use Linux to use Linux. You intentionally do not want people that you consider “below” you to use Linux or even be present in your communities.

Most people use computers to get something done. Be it development, gaming, consuming multimedia, or just “web browsing” (which you intentionally use to degrade people “just” doing that). They do not use computers to use computers. They don’t need to and should need to. If you want to do this, good for you.

But stop trying to gatekeep people out of it. That’s just an a****** behaviour.

Cloudron is also an option. More polished than Yunohost, created by a German company. Very low rate of admin interaction required. But not for free if you need more than two Apps.

Yes,we know about your small population,but just because Karl uses Linux now,does that really matter?