Yeah “but not as annoying” lol. No idea what you mean about jeeps: I’m in the UK, and not a car enthusiast either.

Seems quite good - I’ve tried a LOT of MarkDown editors over the years, but until quite recently, I’d stuck with Zettlr for a long time. I’ve recently reinstalled my laptop, which made me look for alternatives to some software, and I’ve been playing round with MarkText for the last few days, which seems nice.

HelixNotes is definitely good - if I had to drop MarkText, I think I could get on well with it. I like that they have a debian repository, so I can keep it updated with the usual system update software. I downloaded the AppImage as a quick test, but it didn’t work because it was compiled against an old version of glibc.

The only thing I don’t like so far is the format toolbar is at the bottom of the editor screen, and I haven’t found a way to move it.

What about Microsoft Bob? Doesn’t that count as their first attempt?

I learnt to “type” when I was at school, programming a Commodore Vic-20. I thought I was quite fast, but what I had really learnt was just the key combos for common words. It’s what most people who have never learnt properly before do, and it’s called “point and poke”. You don’t realise the extra effort you’re putting in, and the mistakes you’re making (overuse of the backspace key) and so on.

When I went to college at 16 (UK) to study computer science, we had the option of learning touch typing. We all thought we were pretty good at typing, but afterwards, we’d all doubled our typing speed (or more) and increased our accuracy by 10x. We learnt on proper electric golfball typewriters, and as we got better, we all noticed that code entry got a lot faster. The thing that is affected most, though, is typing up from notes or printed copy - because you don’t have to keep looking away from the source, back to the keyboard and screen, you can be much quicker. Also, typing your thoughts is much faster as you are not having to split your attention between the thoughts and the keyboard - what you think just appears on the screen without having to spend mental effort on typing.

Well, it depends what you call spam, how well known your server is (are your email addresses spread far and wide on the web or only known to a couple of people) but a lot of spam is automated and algorithmic, so most servers will be showered with speculative mail addressed to likely mailboxes - which your server still has to process, if only to bounce the message; if you have antispam measures, your server can just drop the connection when it detects a spammy sender (e.g. from an address on a black or greylist). I’m not currently running any mail servers, but a few years back when I did, I used to get about 80% spam incoming.

The list is immense, and I didn’t want to clutter my post with all the details. So just listing off things that spring to mind (because I don’t know what OP doesn’t know):

• Choosing an MTA - sendmail, postfix, exim, etc. and why you might choose one over the others
• Firewall settings
• Software/package management on your chosen distro
• Learning about DNS:
  • Host it - yourself via BIND
  • Or via a DNS service provider
  • DNS record types
    • Domains
    • Subdomains
    • A records/CNAMEs
    • MX records
    • Mail authority records - SPF’s
    • Mail encryption records - DKIM
• Spam filtering, anti-virus
• Learning how to configure your MTA, which requires learning:
  • the configuration file language your MTA uses
  • what all the options mean and what they do
  • what the bare minimum options are to get up and running
  • how to make sure your configuration is secure and won’t be exploitable by bad actors
  • how mail really gets delivered
  • how to setup secure smtp
  • how to set up SPFs
  • troubleshooting why GMAIL or Microsoft won’t accept your mail
  • troubleshooting why GMAIL or Microsoft have stopped accepting your mail
  • dealing with blacklists/greylists when someone sends too many messages, or something that “looks too spammy”
• Mail hosting pitfalls
  • Being an open relay
  • Rate limiting
  • Reputation management
  • Vulnerabilities that let a hacker take over your server
  • Resource management - disk, memory, processes, queues, etc.
  • Downtime when you need to do updates
  • Downtime if you change your DNS configuration

I’ve definitely missed some stuff, and each of those things requires knowing other stuff too, so you can see that it’s really a pretty deep subject. This is precisely why not many people self-host email themselves these days - the big guys have made it harder and harder to do so, in the name of eradicating spam, which they themselves are the biggest vectors for.

I’d suggest you start with a simple static web server if you’re looking for a good beginner project. Use something like Nginx, and just set it up on your local network at first, then work out how to harden it, and open it up to the real internet. There’s a lot less to learn for this usage case, and it’s less likely to get you into trouble.

I say that, because, after reading through the thread, it seems you are hoping to find an (educational) use for an old computer. I did Linux and Unix admin professionally for 15 years, for some famous brands. I would NOT recommend setting up a mail server as a first project - it’s complex in ways you will never expect, and will require learning skills and knowledge that are very specific and you literally can’t “start small and build up” because a lot of the things you don’t know yet will get you into big trouble. Essentially, it’s not too hard to set up the server software, and your hardware is certainly capable of running this task, but making it safe and secure IS hard these days - especially with all the encryption and anti-spam setups you have to learn how to do.

Depends on accent:

South West: jrink me loike a bo’oh wa’er ('=glottal stop like in “ugh”)

London: drink me lyke a botto a wawtah

Merseyside: dlrinch me liche a bottull a wahtah (ch=choking sound)