now that Discord is going to IPO, maybe this will finally be the year of everyone using Matri

[packetcat@tenforward.social]

at least with XMPP the server side is relatively quite simple to run and maintain

Matrix on the other is a fucking million part monstrosity that the only way I got it running is to use a specific Ansible playbook that does it using Docker containers

[packetcat@tenforward.social]

self-hosting chat apps is basically a different set of compromises for each choice, there is no "good" option

IRC - primitive, basically unusable on mobile

XMPP - better than IRC, federates, easy to self host, multi-device is a problem

Matrix - federates, heavy server side app (Synapse) involving a database and a web app for the web interface, scaling issues if you start joining big servers, issues with managing E2E encryption

[packetcat@tenforward.social]

I didn't even mention the biggest problem of all - getting the people you talk with to switch away from WhatsApp/Signal/Facebook Messenger/LINE/WeChat etc.

unless you exclusively talk to other computer touchers its a no go

[packetcat@tenforward.social]

I use a combination of Signal/Discord/iMessage/IRC to talk to everyone I want to talk to

[ iMessage is basically exclusively for close family members right now, I don't really like using it but I also don't want to try and get all my family members to switch to Signal. ]

[nivex@tenforward.social]

@packetcat I've found myself back in the thick of this in the past month or so.

IRC by way of Weechat's relay protocol is moderately usable. I wouldn't want to spend any significant amount of time here, but I can at least check in.

XMPP is better with multi-device than I remembered from the Good Ol Days thanks to Message Carbons and Message Archive Management. OMEMO is admittedly cumbersome in its present form, but I feel like if clients gave it the same UX treatment that Element did it would be more viable. I have some gateways bookmarked to look into when more free time comes my way, notably Biboumi to pull my IRC in.

Matrix... well, you covered that 🫤

[nivex@tenforward.social]

@packetcat Amusingly enough this was the thing that let me get some folk onto Matrix: "Install Element, get account on matrix.org, chat." Despite having a decent enough experience with it these last few years, I've started to sour on it.

I'm keeping my eye out for similar experiences in XMPP. Conversations and converse.js have their own servers you can register on, but I need to give them a more thorough shakedown before I recommend them to anyone else.

[packetcat@tenforward.social]

multiple folks have told me about Delta Chat now, I haven't tried it yet

do any of y'all use this?

[orca@nya.one]

@packetcat@tenforward.social
There are better Matrix servers like conduit which can start with one rust binary and one config file, but also client app for Matrix is very heavy.

[packetcat@tenforward.social]

oh right. DeltaChat is the one that uses e-mail (SMTP+IMAP) as the transport protocol.

https://chatmail.at/doc/relay/

Setting up a chatmail relay doesn't seem *too* bad? seems like a Postfix+Dovecot stack.

[nivex@tenforward.social]

@packetcat The SMTP RFC recommended defaults are retry every 30 minutes for 5 days. When delivery is immediate everybody's happy, but anyone who's had to wait for a 2FA code can share their consternation. This hardly seems a reasonable platform on which to build an _instant_ messenger.

[packetcat@tenforward.social]

@nivex yeah that is my concern as well. e-mail was never designed for instant messaging.

[packetcat@tenforward.social]

"deployment server with reachable SMTP/SUBMISSIONS/IMAPS/HTTPS ports. IPv6 is encouraged if available. Chatmail relay servers only require 1GB RAM, one CPU, and perhaps 10GB storage for a few thousand active chatmail addresses."

hey at least its very low resource usage server side

I think I might fuck around and set one of these chatmail servers for funsies

[packetcat@tenforward.social]

okay so chatmail server is up and running, who's got a Delta Chat address I can exchange some messages with?