Building Independent Infrastructure Services

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Building Independent Infrastructure Services

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Building Independent Infrastructure Services

Over the last years, many hosting platforms have moved into a direction where users depend more and more on large providers, closed ecosystems, expensive subscriptions, and limited control.

At TUX-Network, we are taking a different path.

Instead of maintaining one large shared-hosting environment with too many unrelated services, we are now focusing on smaller, specialized infrastructure projects. These services are easier to secure, easier to maintain, and more useful for people who need specific tools without unnecessary complexity.

Our current focus is on:
  • DNS infrastructure
  • Free and managed subdomain services
  • Independent email hosting
  • Community cloud services
  • Useful tools for developers, hobbyists, sysadmins, and small projects
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🌐 TUX.WF and TUX.RE – Free Subdomains, DNS Tools and Project Domains

One of our main projects is TUX.wf, together with TUX.re.

These services allow users to create and manage their own subdomains.

For example:
  • yourname.tux.wf
  • project.tux.re
  • samba.tux.wf
Free subdomain services used to be common many years ago, but today they have become rare. Many similar services disappeared, became commercial only, or stopped offering real DNS control.

With TUX.WF and TUX.RE, we want to bring this idea back in a modern and more useful way.

The service is intended for:
  • Developers who need a simple hostname for testing
  • Students and learners who want to experiment with DNS
  • Hobby projects and open-source services
  • Small communities
  • Private labs and home servers
  • Temporary project pages
  • Self-hosted services
Planned and available features include:
  • Free subdomain registration
  • DNS record management
  • A, AAAA, CNAME, TXT and MX records
  • Dynamic DNS options
  • Short URL features
  • Reserved names for security and abuse prevention
  • Clean and maintained DNS infrastructure
The goal is not only to offer a free name, but to provide a real DNS tool that gives users more control over their own small infrastructure.

For example, a user could run a small project page, a test API, a home lab service, or a development server under a clean subdomain without buying a full domain first.

This makes TUX.WF and TUX.RE useful for both beginners and experienced users.

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✉ TuxMail – Independent Email Hosting with PostfixAdmin


Another important project is TuxMail.

This service focuses on independent email hosting and is based on proven open-source mail server components:
  • Postfix for SMTP mail transport
  • Dovecot for IMAP and POP3 access
  • PostfixAdmin for mailbox and domain administration
  • Roundcube for webmail access
What makesTuxMail special is not only that users can get a mailbox.

The more interesting part is this:

Users can manage email for their own domain through a PostfixAdmin interface.

This gives users more control than a simple mailbox account.

With TuxMail, users can:
  • Use their own domain for email
  • Create and manage mailboxes
  • Create aliases and forwarding addresses
  • Use standard mail clients such as Thunderbird, K-9 Mail, Apple Mail or Outlook
  • Access mail through IMAP, POP3 and SMTP
  • Use webmail through Roundcube
  • Stay more independent from large mail providers
Today, many email services are either very expensive, strongly tied to a closed ecosystem, or only offer very limited control. In many cases, users only receive one mailbox and cannot properly manage their own domain.

With a PostfixAdmin-based setup, users get a more transparent and flexible solution.

This can be useful for:
  • Small projects
  • Personal domains
  • Open-source communities
  • Small organizations
  • Developers
  • Families or small teams
  • People who want to move away from large centralized providers
Of course, running email infrastructure is not simple. Mail servers must deal with spam, DNS records, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, reverse DNS, reputation, abuse prevention and security.

That is why TuxMail is built with the goal of offering a practical and managed platform while still keeping the spirit of independent email hosting alive.

www.tuxmail.org

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TuxCloud– Community Cloud Services with Nextcloud

The third major service is TuxCloud.

This project is based on Nextcloud and is intended to provide cloud services for the community.

Nextcloud is a powerful open-source platform for file storage, synchronization, collaboration and personal data management.

TuxCloud is planned as a privacy-oriented community cloud service with features such as:
  • File storage
  • Secure file sharing
  • Calendar
  • Contacts
  • WebDAV access
  • Collaboration tools
  • Browser-based access
  • Mobile and desktop sync clients
The purpose of TuxCloud is to offer a more independent alternative to large cloud providers.

Many users want simple cloud storage, but they do not always want to depend on big commercial platforms. Nextcloud gives users more transparency and more control over their data.

The focus of TuxCloud is:
  • Privacy
  • Transparency
  • Community access
  • Useful open-source software
  • Secure and maintained infrastructure
This project is especially interesting for users who already care about Linux, open-source software, self-hosting, privacy and digital independence.

www.tuxcloud.org

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Why We Are Moving in This Direction

The internet has changed a lot.

Many services that were once open, simple and community-oriented have become closed, commercial or difficult to access. Free subdomain services disappeared. Independent email hosting became harder. Cloud storage became dominated by a few large providers.

At the same time, many users still need simple infrastructure tools.

Not everyone wants to run a full DNS server, mail server or cloud server alone. But many users still want more control than they get from large centralized platforms.

That is where our projects come in.

We want to provide services that are:
  • Simple enough for beginners
  • Useful enough for experienced users
  • Affordable for small projects
  • Based on open infrastructure ideas
  • Focused on privacy and independence
  • Maintained with security in mind
Instead of offering everything at once, we prefer to build smaller services with a clear purpose.

This makes the infrastructure easier to protect and easier to improve over time.

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Security and Responsibility

Because these services are public infrastructure tools, security and abuse prevention are important.

DNS, email and cloud platforms can be abused if they are not managed carefully. For that reason, we are working with limits, reserved names, verification processes, logging where required, and clear community rules.

Our goal is to make the services open and accessible, but not uncontrolled.

A responsible infrastructure service must protect both the users and the network itself.

This includes:
  • Preventing spam and abuse
  • Protecting reserved hostnames
  • Keeping systems updated
  • Monitoring service health
  • Using secure mail and DNS configurations
  • Reducing unnecessary attack surface
  • Keeping services separated where possible
This is also one of the reasons why we moved away from a large all-in-one shared-hosting model.

Smaller and specialized services are easier to secure properly.

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Who These Services Are For

These projects are useful for many different types of users:
  • Linux users
  • System administrators
  • Developers
  • Students
  • Open-source projects
  • Small communities
  • Hobby server operators
  • People learning DNS, mail and cloud infrastructure
  • Users who want more independence from big providers
Whether someone needs a test subdomain, a small email setup, a project mailbox, or a simple cloud account, the goal is to provide practical tools that are easy to start with.

We believe that the internet still needs independent services, especially for users who want to learn, build, test and run their own projects without depending completely on large platforms.

We would love to hear your feedback.

What features would you like to see?
What would make these services more useful for your own projects?
Would you use a free subdomain, independent email hosting, or a community cloud service?

Your TUX.RE Team
A TUX-Network.com project

Linux • DNS • Mail • Cloud • Security • Infrastructure
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