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Arthur T Knackerbracket [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/personal-digital-sovereignty-choices-free-linux-servers/ [zdnet.com]

You may have noticed that many European Union (EU) governments and agencies, worried about ceding control to untrustworthy US companies, have been embracing digital sovereignty. Those bodies are turning to running their own cloud and services instead of relying on, say, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. If you prize your privacy and want to control your own services, you can take that approach as well.

Of course, if you're a techie's techie, you could always run your own cloud. I've been running my own servers for decades. These days, I use AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and Ubuntu on my machines.

However, most people don't have many years of Unix/Linux system administration behind them. Fortunately, there are pre-built Linux servers suitable for home and small-business users. With these servers, you still need to be a power user to get the most out of them, but they don't require you to be a Linux expert.

There are three types of ready-to-run Linux server distributions. The first are those that provide software-as-a-service (SaaS) addons and programs. Then there are the distros that focus on providing file server/storage services. Finally, believe it or not, there's one approach meant to replace Windows Server.

1. The privacy-first approach: FreedomBox

FreedomBox, the project initiated by Free Software Foundation (FSF) legal expert Eben Moglen, has matured into Debian's official self-hosting solution.

As Moglen said when he introduced FreedomBox in 2011, "We're building software for smart devices whose engineered purpose is to work together to facilitate free communication among people, safely and securely, beyond the ambition of the strongest power to penetrate. They can make freedom of thought and information a permanent, ineradicable feature of the net that holds our souls."

The platform is now integrated as Debian Linux Blend. This approach enables you to transform a fresh Debian installation into a privacy-focused server via the Plinth web interface.

2. YunoHost: Self-hosting democratized

YunoHost is best described as a "make self‑hosting boring" layer on top of Debian. As its volunteer creators say, "YunoHost is primarily designed for people who want things to 'just work.'"

Similar to Freedom Box, YunoHost functions as both a standalone operating system and a package you can install on an existing Debian installation. Unlike FreedomBox, which can be scaled up for a small business, the YunoHost crew warns, "YunoHost is not designed to 'scale' in the traditional sense. It is intended for a relatively modest number of user accounts and simultaneous users." So, a few dozen users? No problem. A few hundred? No, just no.

YunoHost comes with a small, integrated server stack. Everything else is added from its catalog. On a fresh YunoHost install, you get these main components by default: a web admin interface and a user portal for installing and logging in to all the applications. This setup is supported by Nginx as the web server and reverse proxy, with SSOwat for single sign-on to all installed web apps.

You can also install an email server stack from the start. Your default programs are Postfix for the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server, Dovecot as the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) server, and Rspamd, with DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) handling for spam filtering and mail authentication. As e-mail server programs go, these are the easiest to manage, and YunoHost does a great job of installing them.

However, speaking as someone who's been running email servers for decades, setting them up and managing them on the internet is hard work. You'll need to set up a proper domain, DNS records (MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC) with a static IP address. If your eyes just glazed over, don't try running your own email server.

Like FreedomBox, YunoHost is completely free.

3. TrueNAS: The network storage server

iXsystems' TrueNAS Community Edition is the free, open‑source edition of the TrueNAS storage OS for x86 hardware. This technology turns a PC or server into a dedicated NAS appliance built around OpenZFS. It's effectively the "DIY" version of the same codebase TrueNAS uses in its paid appliances, just without commercial support and with some enterprise features held back.

Unlike the other TrueNAS, this community edition isn't a general-purpose server. It's best used for when you want a storage‑first home or small‑business box. I use my edition for video storage for my Jellyfin media server. With a couple of terabytes of 1930s through 1950s movies, I need all the help I can get. This system is also very useful for virtual machine images and massive database storage.

The community edition is also very useful for small-office NAS jobs, such as sharing files over SMB/NFS to Windows and Linux PCs. The system also works great for backups and archival storage.

TrueNAS is also available for free. If you want to use it in a business, though, you can buy TrueNAS Enterprise on an iXsystems rack server. This comes with high-availability (HA) features and commercial support. Its pricing is quote‑based and not listed as a flat fee. TrueNAS reseller prices for a low-end TrueNAS X10 2U Unified Storage Appliance with 20TB of raw capacity begin at $15,000,

4. Rockstor: BTRFS-powered NAS

Rockstor is another NAS Linux. This system differs from TrueNAS by building on the B-tree file system (BTRFS), a modern copy-on-write (CoW) filesystem for Linux designed for high scalability, fault tolerance, and ease of administration.

Rockstor supports advanced features like snapshots, data compression, and built-in RAID. The system is for users who want storage flexibility without enterprise complexity.

Now built on openSUSE, Rockstor supports both x86_64 and ARM64 architectures, including the Raspberry Pi 4 and RPi 400.

5. Zentyal: Windows server alternative

If you're running a small Windows-based business or you've worked as a Windows network administrator, you might want to give Zentyal a try. Zentyal 8.0 is based on Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS. This SMB server targets organizations seeking to replace Microsoft Windows Server without disrupting existing workflows.

Zentyal comes with native Active Directory (AD) compatibility, which enables:

• Seamless Windows client domain joining.
• Group Policy Object management through RSAT.
• No Client Access License requirements.
• Integration with existing Windows domains as an additional domain controller.

Beyond directory services, Zentyal includes:

• SMTP and POP3/IMAP mail servers with ActiveSync and webmail.
• Gateway services, with firewall, IDS/IPS (Suricata), and HTTP proxy.
• VPN capabilities via OpenVPN and IPSec/L2TP.
• DNS, DHCP, NTP, and CA services.

Zentyal is available as a free "Development Edition," the community edition that you can download as an ISO or install on top of Ubuntu Server/Desktop using their installer script. However, you're on your own for support. If you're not already a Microsoft Certified: Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate, this operating system isn't for you.

If you want to use Zentyal in business, pricing starts at $230 per server per year, with support for up to 25 users.

[...] Taken together, these projects show Linux reclaiming the low‑end server market it helped create, but on very different terms than in the Linux, Apache. MySQL, Python/Perl/PHP (LAMP) era. Instead of expecting a part‑time admin to assemble services piece by piece, these server distros ship as curated appliances with opinionated defaults, auto‑updates, and catalog‑style app install flows

The era of depending on third-party cloud services is yielding to practical self-hosting alternatives. Whether prioritizing privacy, collaboration, storage, or network services, the Linux ecosystem now offers mature, well-maintained options for users willing to invest a modest amount of technical effort in exchange for data sovereignty.

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