My kids play minecraft Java on a raspberry pi and I set up a server running GeyserMC so their friends on tablets could play with them. I'm still deeply annoyed that MS seems to want to kill off Java though.

If you do, have a look at CoreProtect and whitelisting the users you want to be able to play.

The kids already have Nintendo Switches. A raspberry pi wouldn’t be practical and they’d never want to use it when everything else is on the Switch.

We also have our own Microsoft servers. It’s pretty easy to set up a Bedrock server. Though most of the time the kids just host their own on their Switch.

CoreProtect isn’t really needed because they know not to visit public servers and ransoms can’t join our private servers even if they wanted to.