Hey guys, I recently started to play with the thought to deploy a Snikket (XMPP) server on my VPS to play around with it a bit. I already had a Matrix (Continuwuity) server running on an older VPS with Docker at one point. But besides me using some bridges (WhatsApp, Signal etc.) it didn’t see a lot of use. Originally I had set it up with the goal to replace Discord, but so far couldn’t get my small group of gamer friends to switch to something else.
What are your experiences with XMPP (doesn’t have to be Snikket) or Matrix? Would you recommend one over the other maintenance and/or usability wise?
Just curious what the community’s current sentiment is in regards to private self hosted messaging services 😊
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A lot of the people reporting issues with Matrix being slow and resource heavy are reporting issues with Synapse, which is Element’s big Python implementation. My Continuwuity instance, which is a server written in Rust, uses a fraction of a CPU and a total storage in the hundreds of megabytes. A few less features, but it has most of the ones people care about.
Can’t speak for the Synapse hosting, as back when I hosted one myself I directly started with Dendrite (was not really that feature rich) and switched to Continuiwity soon after. And I have to agree, ran like a charm on my VPS and didn’t use a ton of resources. Granted, I was the only user so can’t say how the usage would have increased with more users active.
Do the voice call and video features work with continuwuity?
On desktop? Yes. On Element X? Not yet. Requires additional setup, as it’s not a core part of the homeserver
XMPP is great usability wise. Not sure what server is the best.
Unfortunately there is no “Discord, but (federated/selfhostable) E2EE FLOSS” and at this point I don’t understand why. There isn’t even “Discord, but (centralized/proprietary) E2EE”.
I ran Matrix for like a year, and pretty much hated every minute. It was fragile, complicated, and incredibly, bafflingly resource intensive. Matrix is an overengineered nightmare in my opinion, and it seems to be quickly distancing itself from self-hosters while pursuing enterprise usage. Neat technology, horrible implementation, misguided company.
XMPP is a breath of fresh air in comparison. Just like we still use email everywhere (even for authentication nowadays, fun!), XMPP is not obsolete simply because it’s older. It’s a solid foundation, plenty extensible, and does almost everything I can imagine needing to do without unnecessary complexity.
Matrix’s bridges are its killer feature, and it’s nice… when it works. But it’s simply not worth the headache of dealing with Matrix, in my opinion.
XMPP is the best among the listed options, although ??? is not that far behind (or wouldn’t be, I still can’t find a mobile app, does anyone know one???). Good servers include Snikket, ejabberd and Prosody. It’s also the best fit for a small and/or private installation because it’s quite light (not lightweight like IRC, but still light), whereas Matrix is a nu-protocol and this quite hefty on resources, and honestly I have never seen benchmarks on what running a ??? service is like, not even for the official Docker container.
Nobody has mentioned mattermost yet. I haven’t stress tested it by any means, but I found it too be decent.
I couldn’t get into matrix, but I was a huge fan of open fire. It’s interface was stupid easy for XMPP administration and for awhile I ran it no issue with my group of friends. granted we ended up just going back to discord not due to any issue with the server or protocol but because it was tedious trying to get people to switch off a platform that works for most people.
Yeah that’s the thing with a lot of these platforms, it’s dead simple for most people to download the app and create the account. You already loose two thirds (if not more) of the people as soon as the sign up process gets a bit more complicated, even more if they have to manage and secure any kind of secret (encryption keys) themselves. Not that it would be so difficult to save this stuff in a password manager, but I guess that’s already where a lot of people still fall short… What a uphill battle that was (still is) with some of my friends and family to get them to use a password manager for a start.
There is also some that you just don’t want to put that type of responsibility onto either. I moved my grandfather to a password manager 5 or 6 years back. I reiterated at least 8 times do not forget this password if you do you will lose all passwords and need to do everything over again.
He lasted 3 or 4 weeks then suddenly called me saying he couldn’t remember his password period. Like he tried for a good 40 minutes to guess what he may have done and was in a pretty intense panic because he didn’t want to have to change every service he had.
Thankfully it had not been long enough for his file history backup to have deleted the file, so i just restored the last backup of his passwords.docx file and put it back where he was used to it. He lost those few weeks of new passwords but that was a lot better than losing every password.
I’m not about to try and have him use a password manager again, he has decent enough password management skills since he doesn’t reuse passwords period, but like, it was far too risky putting him on a password manager again.
What’s your end goal?
Simplex is easy to host for direct messaging and I had decent luck with Mattermost as a slack replacement.
By desktop do you mean the jitsi call widget thing? Instead of the native call support that I believe element x uses?
I am considering using ???.
Will get to it someday.Only heard great things about it
