> What would be useful is a pre-assembled virtual machine image or other form of appliance that allows you to deploy and test a mail server within about an hour or so, without having to duct-tape any of this together yourself.
There at least a couple Linode stack scripts that will do this, but I haven't given any of them a try since last time I checked they were mostly/all Ubuntu based. Dovecot + postfix isn't all that difficult to set up, and there are literally tons of guides all over the place (Arch wiki, Linode, Dovecot's site, etc.) for dovecot, postfix, courier, and anything else you might want. Perhaps the most dumbfounding thing for a beginner is the certificate step...
There at least a couple Linode stack scripts that will do this, but I haven't given any of them a try since last time I checked they were mostly/all Ubuntu based. Dovecot + postfix isn't all that difficult to set up, and there are literally tons of guides all over the place (Arch wiki, Linode, Dovecot's site, etc.) for dovecot, postfix, courier, and anything else you might want. Perhaps the most dumbfounding thing for a beginner is the certificate step...