I’m not sure if this is the right place but me and my friend group have lately become privacy conscious and wanted to stop using discord and other types of social media, and only log onto self hosted options that only we can access.
we’ve eliminated something like Revolt (now named Stoat due to it missing ideal features and the developers being anti-decentralized (as well as being extremely hostile to the userbase noticably…)
Does anyone have any idea what would be an ideal service to use?
Matrix would probably be one of the better options, but xmpp is a pretty good choice as well.
What is “ideal” for you? I use xmpp but some people want stickers and shit and use Matrix instead, it’s much more heavy weight but also has these extra features. There’s also rocket.chat that has all the extra stuff but is not built for federation.
Is essentially a self hosted slack.
simplex ?
There are many solutions. I have chosen xmpp/ejabberd/conversations/monal.
You know, I’m really curious about xmpp, kinda wanna check it out, but then every time I am reminded that it exists it comes with a new and different chain of dependencies? other apps? whatever the other things are anyways that people list with it. And then I don’t bother researching because suddenly it seems like the more complicated option. Not intending to insult, just lamenting.
@ArchEngel @Eirikr70 You can try it out by just downloading a client and registering an account on a free server. It’s all here: https://xmpp.org/getting-started/.
Once you find a client you like and decide you want to stick with it, you can install a server you like. Prosody, snikket, and ejabberd are the most well-regarded (and snikket is just a fork of prosody that’s designed to have a super easy setup; so realistically you’re down to a choice between two).
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I’ve had a little snikket (prosody docker, xmpp) sever running for a year. monacles or cheogram are just fine, playing games with the fam in the chats is really cool.
dino or gajim on desktop.
calls work well, but android doesn’t treat it as an actual phone call (home assistant automations based on phone state won’t work)
and I’ve just now gotten direct messaging tied into home assistant, so i can use it for general notifications. it’d be awesome to get encryption though.
omemo is a bit of a pain, but they’ve all caught on.
but yeah i mean, very little hassle
You could use matrix and host your own instance.
Seconding this! I have my own matrix server, it can be a bit of a pain to set up, but it works better than 99% of any other alternatives (trust me, I’ve tried almost every one of them)
I started trying to set it up last week, I can’t seem to figure out why authentik and it will not play. It either tries authentik and gets a 404 or ignores it and doesn’t find the user. (Nginx is also involved). It’s the least user friendly thing I’ve tried to self host so far
we’ve thought about this but the documentation isn’t user friendly for self hosting. we’re generally worried about undesirable people finding it which would not be good.
There is no risk of others finding it if you don’t turn on federation. It becomes a fully private instance. Just set federation to false.
The documentation you were looking at might’ve been the Matrix specification.
There is documentation on how to host a Matrix server, I’d honestly recommend using containers (maybe docker compose) for this one. It can definitely be confusing setting up a service like a Matrix homeserver for the first time.
As for other people finding it, you can (and should) make your homeserver invite-only. It’s also possible to disable federation, which makes the server self-contained. It will not accept incoming connections from other servers, nor make outgoing connections to other servers.
This does mean everyone you want to talk with has to be on your homeserver. There are probably better options available if you want to avoid Matrix’ federation issues, like Spacebar.
you can make your instance invite only
Continuwuity.org has reasonable documentation, and you can (and should) disable signups or require a token to sign up.
I wish Rocket Chat got more attention
I bailed on rocketchat a few years ago for Mattermost and never looked back. Rocketchats update cycle was insane, sometimes two releases in a week but often several a month. A few pdates required full database dumps and manual tweaking. It just wasn’t for me.
I have run it for years, and I wish they weren’t so limiting and heavy-handed in trying to force people into a paid subscription.
Irc with convos or the lounge as a web interface.
And yes, that’s what I am running.
can they have file upload/image sharing integrated? (as in not uploading somewhere and manually pasting link)
due to it missing ideal features
what features do you want? kindly elaborate
XMPP with Snikket could be an easy solution. If you don’t want to talk to the wider web make sure to disable federation.
Snikket is great. I liked my choice of Prosody with Monocles and Gajim for server, Android and Windows/Linux, respectively
Yunohost comes with a builtin xmpp chat server.
Maybe https://jami.net/ ?
This one is very interesting!
Not quite sure what kind of privacy you need, but matrix is reasonably easy to self host, and allows you to federate if you want.
Also has plenty of clients.
If you want low tech, hosting IRC is easy too.
IRC, though you’ll want to use it over TLS.
XMPP, which someone else listed, is also good if you want a more instant-message-like interface.
