See this howto: https://poolp.org/posts/2019-09-14/setting-up-a-mail-server-with-opensmtpd-dovecot-and-rspamd/

I have delivery to the inbox of all major providers using this. Email is not that hard..

Been hosting my own email for over 20yrs. Get a vps at some reputable hoster, and make this a dedicated mailserver. Be sure to setup all dns records that are required, and rollout antispam measures.

Alma, Talos, OpenBSD

I run unattended-upgrades on all the debian/ubuntu deployments I manage. One of the deployments even has automatic reboots enabled. I still do major upgrades by hand/terraform, but the process itself works flawless in my experience.

Can you explain what you mean with lightweight?

SCO OpenServer

See a search engine and do some research. Maybe try out a bunch of different distros and find out for yourself

You will be in for a surprise once you learn about tcpdump ;-) Welcome to internet hosting!

Some script that parses blocklists into unbound local-data statements, combined with cron and unbound-control

For me, selfhosting is about selfhosting. Using 3rd party options hosted by someone else is not selfhosting by its very definition. A reverse proxy works, and you can trivially use that to host a gazillion websites on the same ip+port due to the magic of a ‘virtual host’

My life became less stressfull since I started to depend less on technology. I do need a playground to keep my skills sharp tho.