and even when you do know what you’re doing, you’re probably choosing not to host your own. at least not one that faces the public. a private mail ‘server’ that consolidates mail for you from multiple providers (and sends mail back out the same way) is different.

i have an old wood desk at the office. it just resonates and amplifies noise when i set a desktop form factor external hdd (with its attached rubber feet) on it. it now sits on a couple old-school foam rubber mouse mats.

don’t expect a 19 year old laptop to perform all the tricks something more ‘modern’ can do, such as transcoding video for a streaming media server. also note that a t5600 is not a ulv chip (draws as much as 34w under load, on its own)–so probably not a candidate to run ‘lid down’ without some outside help for cooling.

it’s not fast, it’s not power efficient, it has slow networking (10/100 and 22-year old ‘g’ wifi), and lacks usb3 for ‘tolerable’ speed on extra external storage space—but it will be ‘ok enough’ for learning on.

if you go with something like yunohost or even dietpi, you will pretty much restrict yourself to what it can run and do and how it does it. if you want more ‘control’ or to install things they don’t offer themselves, you’ll need to ‘roll your own’. a base (console only) debian would be a great place to start. popular, stable, and tons of online resources and tutorials.

i use dietpi, which is built upon a minimal debian.