Right, but how many people are willing to use Signal? I have my own messaging server, and those who don’t want to use it write sms to me.

I have self-hosted Matrix for a couple of years. I eventually settled with xmpp/ejabberd/conversations. It is easier to maintain and less resource intensive, especially if you want to go the federation route.

I have been self-hosting my mail server for the past 5 or 6 years with success. Recently my ISP decided to close port 25 so I have to use a third party to deliver my outgoing mail.

I genuinely don’t understand what you are paying for. I must have missed something.

What cost?

It is hard to set up and you might need an SMTP relay since most ISPs close port 25. But it is feasible.

I have everything at home, including the mail server. The only third party to my setup is a SMTP relay. All on an Odroid H4+. With a backup server on a Raspberry Pi 4 at my daughter’s.

What I do is a local backup on a different disk with BorgBackup, then a copy of that local backup to a Pi at a friend’s place, with rsync.

Don’t you want to turn off the whole NAS? Of you don’t have the disks spinning, the NAS is probably useless.

I run Immich which makes me really happy. Maybe you should give it another try…

You won’t find apps that provide the same service as permitted by the entire Google ecosystem. That would mean that they are as intrusive as Google and you wouldn’t be willing to use them. You either choose convenience and you can keep Google or renounce it a bit and use one app per function.

Upgraded to Debian Trixie two days ago. Runs flawlessly

I use Watchtower just to notify me of the updates. So the docker socket is read-only.

I second that advice. When choosing the HDD, make sure it is NAS-grade.