I've run a private server with my friends since the Riot days (2018? Earlier?)
Here's how I made it work:
- No federation. You click an invite link I send you and make an account on my server. Therefore, no spam.
- Encryption disabled in the main group chat room. The encryption experience was very poor in Riot and remains inexplicably baffling to non-technical users in Element. Supposedly Element X fixes these problems, but it doesn't support the type of SSO my server uses yet. I decided to just turn it off. DMs are still encrypted.
- Use Synapse.
- $5 tier digital ocean droplet. I plan to move it to my homelab soon.
For the most part, it has been pretty smooth. Dealing with encryption UX issues was the low point.
I wish that there were custom emoji packs though :(
aidenn0 · 1d ago
> People would pipe up in channels and say "this doesn't work" only to be told they were using the wrong app and should go back to the one marked unsupported
This sounds like how XMPP was about 10 years ago. e.g. the transition to XEP-0280 was rather terrible and anyone complaining about it was told they were using the wrong client; often without any recommendation for which client to switch to.
sunscream89 · 1d ago
Praise your outspokenness dude. I have had a love hate with it for years (as in take a year break in between smoldering frustrations) years.
It’s impossible to find anything alive with the growing lists of dead old things.
It would be nice for room lists to decay dead channels out of attention from the casual user.
nadir_ishiguro · 1d ago
I get (and share some of) the frustration, but have yet to find anything better.
XMPP and IRC are not it, for me. Neither give me a better experience nor are they easier for non-techies than matrix.
I also empathize with the people behind the project, as monetization is much more difficult for non-scumbag companies, among which I definitely count Discord, Slack and to a lesser degree Telegram.
As a user though, the speed of improvement has been less than satisfying. It has felt like matrix was just shy of fulfilling its promises for years now.
I still enjoy using it though and am hopeful for its future.
toastal · 11h ago
> XMPP [… is] not it
What. XMPP is much easier to work with since both servers & clients use an order of magnitude less resources (CPU, RAM, storage, bandwidth). This makes them easier to self-host & also get someone to actually launch & keep an app open if it isn’t spiking. There are handholdingest deployments like the server+client of Snikket. & if you want that web link to send someone that is skeptical of installing yet another chat application, Movim covers that angle with posts, & multi-user, multi-stream audio/voice calls (where you can use the home instance, or self-host it). But also there is clients/services for anything in between—& without a protocol that keeps as much metadata & skyrockets on costs trying to sync the entire history of every chat/attachment for all users (which inevitably leads to all that metadata synced to the mothership, Matrix.org).
Here's how I made it work:
- No federation. You click an invite link I send you and make an account on my server. Therefore, no spam.
- Encryption disabled in the main group chat room. The encryption experience was very poor in Riot and remains inexplicably baffling to non-technical users in Element. Supposedly Element X fixes these problems, but it doesn't support the type of SSO my server uses yet. I decided to just turn it off. DMs are still encrypted.
- Use Synapse.
- $5 tier digital ocean droplet. I plan to move it to my homelab soon.
For the most part, it has been pretty smooth. Dealing with encryption UX issues was the low point.
I wish that there were custom emoji packs though :(
This sounds like how XMPP was about 10 years ago. e.g. the transition to XEP-0280 was rather terrible and anyone complaining about it was told they were using the wrong client; often without any recommendation for which client to switch to.
It’s impossible to find anything alive with the growing lists of dead old things.
It would be nice for room lists to decay dead channels out of attention from the casual user.
XMPP and IRC are not it, for me. Neither give me a better experience nor are they easier for non-techies than matrix.
I also empathize with the people behind the project, as monetization is much more difficult for non-scumbag companies, among which I definitely count Discord, Slack and to a lesser degree Telegram.
As a user though, the speed of improvement has been less than satisfying. It has felt like matrix was just shy of fulfilling its promises for years now.
I still enjoy using it though and am hopeful for its future.
What. XMPP is much easier to work with since both servers & clients use an order of magnitude less resources (CPU, RAM, storage, bandwidth). This makes them easier to self-host & also get someone to actually launch & keep an app open if it isn’t spiking. There are handholdingest deployments like the server+client of Snikket. & if you want that web link to send someone that is skeptical of installing yet another chat application, Movim covers that angle with posts, & multi-user, multi-stream audio/voice calls (where you can use the home instance, or self-host it). But also there is clients/services for anything in between—& without a protocol that keeps as much metadata & skyrockets on costs trying to sync the entire history of every chat/attachment for all users (which inevitably leads to all that metadata synced to the mothership, Matrix.org).