Having an environment like proxmox is very handy for learning and testing. When you find something to test, spin up a clean machine and you have a safe environment to learn that can be removed after. You can also try out different distros that way.

I’d recommend setting up Incus instead however, it works fine on a desktop/laptop if you’re running a linux distro they support and don’t have a dedicated machine to use.

They also have a very good tutorial/demo that shows the basics: https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/try-it/

It should be easier to port forward SMTP to the mailcow installation for incoming mail and only use NPM for the web interface.

If netbird has enough DNS support you might be able to setup all the mailcow recommended settings there so you have auto discovery from mail-clients on the netbird VPN.

Incoming mail is pretty easy to get working anywhere, but outgoing is restricted if your IP adress is in any way suspicious. Using sendgrid, authsmtp, or something similar is the easy way.

For the hardcore, finding a VPS with a company that blocks outgoing smtp as default but will unblock if you convince them you’re responsible can be fun and/or frustrating. You’ll have a mail relay there for outgoing email at the minimum but can also get incoming email via that server. The smallest possible server should be enough.

Frogger, played a lot of that and had to stop myself before crossing roads for awhile after.

In my mind I was trying to optimize moving the same direction as the car and sneak in before the meeting car got there. I’m lucky to be alive.

From personal experience, if you’re hosting Gitlab and make it available to the internet, make sure to keep it updated or your server will be super slow hosting a crypto miner within a year.

The DSA used here has been in effect for a month or so. This specific case is not why it was created in the first place - but previous failures of platform to handle to EU negative propaganda is one reason it was created.