Over the years I have had a number of paid email services whose inconveniences only increase over time, I then left them and tried another despite the inconvenience of loosing the emails.
My last one (mailbox.org) advertises a fair bit about its "honesty" not available from its competitors, so they claim.
I followed their procedure to download all my emails wasting a fair bit of time in the process, only to find that such "download" only creates the "download" on THEIR system (does absolutely nothing?) and, as far as I could tell, only viewable from their system (displays the original emails?).

I have a number of (paid) "Linodes" hosted by Linode.com (technically faultless - I am impressed), now a Swiss company and I am contemplating running my own personal email service (like Evolution available in Debian) on one of those "Linodes" (based in Singapore) but I am completely ignorant in that field.

I suspect, like many things Linux, it is probably just a matter of installing and running the software in a "default" config so my question is more about anyone able to suggest tutorials for users like myself wanting to avoid, if possible, to get deeply involved in the subject - it is only my personal emails although some are inevitably business-related.

Any hint also welcome.

Thank you for your help.

Well, I can't give linode specific help, but I can tell you more about using Linux to self host an email server.

My working servers, are a bit old fashioned, for the most part. But here is the general steps I followed for an older Linux distribution, very generalized.

First, hardware, I run mine on an antsle. My general mail server is vmail. vmail just handles email, nothing else. It is a VM on antsle, as pretty much all my servers.

I'm running, but will upgrade at some point, an older version of Mandriva Linux, one of the last. 2010.1, the spring edition from that year.

Back then, you had to do everything manually, there didn't seem to be any such thing as docker, which I'm learning for using someday, when I redo my servers. There might be docker containers for this now.

So, the first thing I did, is setup a basic system, setting the hostname and all that. The system hostname, that is. Then, I setup my users, which I wrote a bunch of scripts for. It was before joining to the AD structure was possible, and before it was possible to create an AD server with Linux, widely available. So I used local users. I might keep newer versions this way, because I prefer the "install it, then you have it", like alexa, vs the open an account, and you have everything, like google. That gets too confusing for me, but it might be the way the world is going. I know you don't want google, just talking about my experience with the two ways you can use accounts on servers.

I made specific scripts or my e-mail server, as well. I tend to install them, when they are installed, in /usr/bin. Then, install and configure postfix. Basically, postfix, if it hasn't changed, to do it, all you have to do, is to edit main.cf, and I believe it went in /etc/postfix. Then, all your email users, will automatically be email accounts. Then, you have to either just install remote email tools (protocols), or you've got to instlall a webmail service, or both. I installed both. I only know how to get pop3 working in this setup, though. And the usual webmail was too hard for me, so I always used usermin. Then, assuming you want to share the e-mail server, you just open a few ports for it. I will NOT discuss opening ports right now, just the other stuff.

My only problem I've ever had for this setup, was usermin loses configuration every time you reboot the server.

In any case, please tell me if you want more detail on self hosting, the way I've done it. It might be old, but the steps probably still apply to newer distros. I'm sure that they didn't totally replace all older methods. There just might be newer support for older methods.

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As far as trying to be helpful, I'm going to try to focus on helping you first. Tell me if you want more details, but that is an overview of the steps I took to self host. I know even hints can help, and go along way, so there's my first hint! Also, I now noticed you asked for hints first...

They took it down, but I started here. Maybe a newer version would help you: https://www.ispconfig.org/blog/tutor...4-ispconfig-2/.

Update of that article: https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/...and-ispconfig/

I haven't read that one yet though.

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All the basic things I learned about servers, as applied to me, were in that article. Before that, I just knew about setting up windows XP as a server, as far as getting magic jack to work. Back then, I would do all my server work locally too, sitting at a keyboard and mouse.

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Thank you for the answers.

I am slowly following up with a bit of research and learning on the Internet.
My expectation is that I will have a number of accounts as the only user.

About 15 years ago I had a static IP address on one of my home machine and Evolution working on it but what I did then, if I could remember it, would probably be caveman technology today.

To my surprise, it seems it is now possible to have mail client installed (which seems to be all I need) on my home machine, even through wifi (dyndns?), and even use the browser as a mail client - all brand-new to me.
If my understanding is correct, I could have software like Evolution in a hosted service as well as on my home machine and set up my own mail accounts accordingly.

My needs are probably much more simpler than what my questions appear to ask but info on the internet is about much more complex tasks like setting up a mail server for one's customers which I definitely do not need.

My main problem is likely to be bad at finding keywords that could lead to suitable info on the net.

I think you will need a domain name so emails can find your computer.

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Some registrars offer dynamic DNS as either part of their service for free or an add-on for an extra fee. That would save the extra step of subscribing to a separate dynamic DNS service like No-IP.

Michael W Lucas has written recently that he is starting a book on how to host your own e-mail service:

• “Run Your Own Mail Server” chapter 0
  
• Sponsorship Open: “Run Your Own Mail Server”

It might not be out soon enough for your needs in this specific thread but should be of use in the not so distant future and useful to those reading this thread later on.

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Yes, noip or duckdns "might" have free plans for email MX records. Thats what they call it in dns. If you dont have a static ip, you need this.

As far as i know, a mail client like evolution goes on the client, not server.

I dont know with my approach, whether you are limited by memory, and if theres an upper limit on number of acvounts, but if so, ive never hit it.

As for needing MX records to recieve email. If you do it my way, there might be a way to do it without needing them, which means free dynamic dns for sure. Mind you, its non-standard. You just use one email for sending and storage, and the other for recieving. Then, inside your network you can send and revieve on the server yourself. Outside, give them both addreses.

Keywords to find this setup on your own can be as follows from google:

* the perfect server
* email server + linux + setting up
* mageia linux + drakewizard

If you want to keep searching, go ahead. Otherwise, at your time for it, i can provide a tutorial for you.

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Thank you very much for that offer, my inclination to continue to search regardless is that I do not have a clear idea of what I am trying to do and I am reluctant to bother volunteers with too many basic questions for which I could easily find the answer on the net.
For example, using a domain name instead of an IP address was an obscure subject to me till I discovered in the last few days it's (easily) doable. I need to make sure I would understand a tutorial.