Our great sponsors
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Paper
The most widely used, high performance Minecraft server that aims to fix gameplay and mechanics inconsistencies
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Geyser
A bridge/proxy allowing you to connect to Minecraft: Java Edition servers with Minecraft: Bedrock Edition.
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InfluxDB
Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.
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LeviLamina
A lightweight, modular and versatile plugin loader for Minecraft Bedrock Server BDS, formerly known as LiteLoaderBDS
Bukkit, Spigot, etc. are all server software modifictions for JE (BE doesn't have any sadly) that allow the use of so called plugins. First, there was bukkit. Then a fork named spigot was created, and from that fork a fork called paper, which is the standard for JE today. They're installed just like normal binaries (I'm not sure if there are official docker containers available, but they run on java, so it isn't really needed).
Well, there are 2 editions of minecraft. "Minecraft: Java" for PC, and "Minecraft: Bedrock" for PC and consoles. Because your kids play on the switch, you will need the server software for the Bedrock Edition (BE for short), which isn't really advanced in terms of modding (But it does support every aspect of minecraft, which includes the built-in "command blocks" and "structure blocks", yet nothing beyond that). So, you could either use that or use the software for Java Edition (JE) with the packet translator GeyserMC, which is... buggier, but allows you to use the plugin feature of JE.
Pocketmine, LiteLoader, Nukkit...