Naomi Brockwell https://www.nbtv.media/episodes does a good job of blending accessible presentation of privacy issues with technically viable solutions. Recently she’s been more on an advocacy tack, but there are some gems in the back catalogue that explain not just why you should care but the sorts of products/software you can use to address your concerns. She provides suggestions, but you should take those as just an idea and develop your own answers!

So, in between watching those videos find out all you can about how Debian (for servers) and OpenWRT (for routers) work from their websites, and use $preferred_search_engine to learn about why Proxmox, Unbound, Postfix, Dovecot, XMMS, WireGuard, Nextcloud can help improve your privacy.

Get that used Optiplex, install a Linux on it and begin experimenting! Don’t worry about the perfect hardware config yet. You can source other parts if you feel you really need them later. Although more RAM is always good, but you knew that already.

Along the way you will want to learn enough to decide whether you prefer VMs or Containers, or a blend; which filesystem(s) you prefer; which distributions you are going to deploy; which backup system you are going to implement; whether Apache or Nginx; and whether you like systemd or want to simply blast off and nuke it from orbit. You may also want to take a look at Ansible now. And Git. Git has saved my server config bacon more times than I care to remember.

Not sure quite where to recommend you look for bang up to date introduction to Linux networking stuff these days. The Linux Networking Howto was hopelessly out of date ten years ago. The distribution howtos are pretty good on at least the basics. Wikipedia might be useful on more advanced topics. And then searching for specific problems or needs normally turns up some learned responses on stackexchange or equivalent.

And as one 90s kid to another, if you haven’t read Permanent Record by Edward Snowden yet, consider getting a copy. He grew up at the same time and does a great job of explaining why this journey matters.

Experimenting with VMs is the way forward.

Basic networking knowledge is vital. And being able to configure your own firewall(s) safely is an important skill. Check out something like Foomuuri, or Firewald. Shorewall is brilliant for documentation and description of issues (with diagrams!) but it does not use the newer Linux kernel nftables and is no longer actively developed.

Go for it with Nextcloud.

I would also recommend at least having a shot at setting up an email server, although I would recommend pushing through to a fully working system. It is possible, and is very satisfying to have in place. The process of setting one up touches so many different parts of internet function and culture that it is worth it even if you don’t end up with a production system. The Workaround.org ISPMail stuff is a good starting point, and includes some helpful background information at every stage, enough so you can begin to understand what’s going on in the background and why certain choices are being made - even if you disagree with the decisions.

Python is great for server admin, although most server config and startup shutdown snippets are written in BASH. You will no doubt have already begun picking that up as you interact with your VMs.

I came here to upvote the post that mentions haproxy, but I can’t see it, so I’m resorting to writing one!

Haproxy is super fast, highly configurable, and if you don’t have the config nailed down just right won’t start so you know you’ve messed something up right away :-)

It will handle encryption too, so you don’t need to bother changing the config on your internal server, just tweak your firewall rules to let whatever box you have haproxy running on (you have a DMZ, right?) see the server, and you are good to go.

Google and stackexchange are your friends for config snippets. And I find the actual documentation is good too.

Configure it with certificates from let’s encrypt and you are off to the races.

Working here (UK).

And will be cancelled in 18 months with 2 weeks notice.

This approach sounds good.

I think the correct approach is both, if you have the option.

Most devices accept two name servers. Redundancy is always good, especially for DNS.

I’ve used this list generating package for years now with great results: https://github.com/opencoff/unbound-adblock/tree/master

It is designed to generate blocking lists that can be used with unbound, the DNS resolver. There are even instructions for how to configure unbound so if you are new to it all you can follow along.

I use the resulting lists in my two local DNS name servers, running unbound.

The way it works is that if a query for a blocked address comes in to one of thenlocal DNS servers it returns a domain not found result. If the address is not on the block list then it forwards the query on to an internet DNS resolver securely using DoT.

You can gain further control over your DNS results by choosing those upstream resolvers carefully. Quad9 and Cloudflare etc all offer DoT resolving, along with some further filtering (eg. for malware), or completely unfiltered DNS if that’s what you want.

Services like cleanbrowsing.org offer more fine grained filtering, useful if you want a family-friendly set of DNS results, based off categorify.org. You can pay for really fine tuned results, or there is a free layer which provides still very useful basic categories.

Combining the two forms of filtering, local advert and tracking blocking, along with open internet content categorisation, seems to be very effective.

I get complaints about too many adverts when my kids are on WiFi away from home. I take it as a compliment.

Edit: Forgot to mention! Another minor gripe I have is that my current 1 router / 2 routers-as-AP solution isn’t meshed, so my devices have to be aware of all 3 networks as I walk across my property. It’s a pain that I know can be solved with buying dedicated access points (…right?), but I’d like to know other’s experiences with this, either with OpenWRT, or other network solutions!

This works very well with OpenWRT on each AP and/or router device by using the same ESSID and password combo on each of them, enabling WLAN roaming and also 802.11r Fast Transition to allow your mobile devices to hand-off quickly from one AP to another as signal strength levels demand. With this enabled you keep the same IP address, and even SSH sessions don’t drop when you move from one AP to another, it all happens in the background. As far as the end-user is concerned it is all just one big happy wifi network.

802.11r is not mesh, that’s a separate thing but and you can do it with OpenWRT too. I don’t need to because I have ethernet to all my APs, so all the RF bandwidth is available for the last leg from AP to device(s), and not being used by back-haul from AP to AP through to the router as well.

In your use case I would consider grouping devices into categories and having a different wifi network for each category with the dhcp and firewall rules set accordingly.

VLANs on the ethernet-side might also be useful, but it sounds like most of your devices are on WiFi, so it might well be possible to get a “mature” setup without needing that extra complexity.

As others have said, backing these settings up and restoring them to a new device in the case of hardware failure is generally straightforward. Care is needed when replacing the broken device with a new one because of naming conventions varying from device to device, but the network logic, and things like dhcp reservations can be carried over.

Windows 98

If you weren’t at a university it was generally a challenge to get hold of disks. Downloading at home took forever on a 28.8 or even 56k modem (ie. 56 kilobits per second).

Slackware and Redhat disk sets were the thing, in my experience. But generally that only gave you the compiled code, not the source (although there was an another set of disks with the source packages).

If you wanted to recompile stuff you had to download the right set of packages, and be prepared to handle version conflicts on your own (with mailing list and usenet support).

Recompiling the kernel with specific patches for graphics cards, sound cards, modems and other devices (I remember scanners in particular), or specific combinations of hardware was relatively common. “Use the source, Luke!” was a common admonition. Often times specific FAQ pages or howtos would be made available for software packages, including games.

XFree86 was very powerful on hardware it supported, but was very finnicky. See the other posts about the level of detail that had to be supplied to get combinations of graphics cards and monitors working without the appearance of magic smoke.

Running Linux was mostly a enthusiast/hobbyist/geek thing, for those who wanted to see what was possible, and those who wanted to tinker with something approaching Unix, and those who wanted to stretch the limits of what their hardware could do.

Many of those enthusiasts and hobbyists and geeks discovered that Linux could do far more than anyone previously had been prepared to admit or realise. They, and others like them, took it with them into progressively more significant, and valuable projects, and it began to take over the world.

SSH along with the extra stuff it comes with like scp is the way forward.

The two following suggestions make use of secure shell.

Termux and then pkg install mc (MC is Midnight Commander)

Alternatively, if you are feeling brave and GUI, Total Commander here.

Consider using tar to create an archive of your home directory, and then unpacking that on the new machine. This will help to capture all the links as well as regular files, and their permissions.

Take a minute to think what else you have changed on the old machine, and then take another minute to think how tricky it would be to replicate on a new machine. Downloading the apps again is gloriously easy. Replacing configs, or keys and certificates, is not!

I normally archive /etc as well, and then I can copy out the specific files I need.

Did you install databases? You’ll want to follow specific instructions for those.

Have you set up web sites? You’ll want to archive /var/www as well.

I have never knowingly used Arch. Am I allowed to like this song?

Also, Taylor Swift, is that you?

Awesome. Now stick with it!

And remember, different isn’t wrong, it’s different.

Is this just the backend, or is it UI too? Is there an easy way to find this out myself in future?

Procmail for the old school win.

Yes.

Not tried the app version. Been using Fairemail for a while now, since k9 was unmaintained.

Fairemail is well maintained. Quick. Supports multiple accounts very well. Loads of features (could be a downside for those who like things simple). Designed with security and privacy as top priorities right from the start. Open source development. For a long time its been the best email client on Android IMHO.

I cut my teeth on an early version of The Linux Networking Howto, still available at tldp.org. That’s a little bit out of date now :-) but the basic IPv4 networking concepts are still good.

These days so much is implementation or distribution dependent. There has been so much very rapid development in this field during the internet era that the age of documentation matters significantly.

A mitigating, but also confusing, factor is that different generations of networking tools have backwards compatibility built in so that it has been possible to build firewalls on kernels running nftables using iptables utilities in userspace.

I think you could do worse than starting with the Debian wikis and then drilling down into other documentation for the specific distributions or applications you want to use.

I seem to remember that openwrt.org and shorewall.org (though that product is EOL) also have some good overarching network stuff. I think Hurricane Electric he.com may still do their free basic IPv6 certificate programme?

Wikipedia is also your friend in this, especially the references.

I’ve enjoyed onemarcfifty.com’s videos too, but that format isn’t what you are looking for, and the transcripts I have seen are not formatted.