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XMPP as a Discord alternative for small group? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 7 months ago by hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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Hi. I have a group of 6 people using Discord to chat. Recently Discord changed a lot and we're looking for an alternative. We have a few requirements:

Good client on multiple platforms
Easy to use search
Self hosted
Permanently saved chat history & attachments on server (no expiration)
Easy image upload (Ctrl+V to post image from clipboard)

IRC isn't an option as chat history is saved on the client, and there's no good integrated way to share files and preview images. Matrix would be an overkill as we're a small group not interested in federation, and the available clients had a few bugs. Mattermost lacks a good mobile app (their current one had bunch of bugs). XMPP appears to be the best as it is extensible and has many clients available.

However, I tried configuring prosody on my FreeBSD server and it seems like it doesn't permanently save chat history or attachment files. Does anyone know if these can be solved? Or is there any better alternative than XMPP?

Thanks.

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[–] solidgrue@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago (11 children)

I maintained an ejabberd server for myself and a few friends for many years. The config language was a little arcane to me at first, but it was pretty solid after I got it set up. I used a couple of different client apps with it over that time, most of which are still available on the F-droid repo. It was fun, but got annoying when the server needed maintenance, or was down, or because of any of the other minor nuisances that come along with maintaining a service for others to use.

Eventually we all ended up just moving over to Signal because it was just as good from the view of cost-benefit and risk for us. We're just trading stupid memes and Saturday night stories among ourselves. The most radical thing we might organize is a trip to Vegas for the week.

Definitely try it out, but consider that being a comms provider for others is always a bigger chore than it seems at the outset.

[–] mbirth@lemmy.mbirth.uk 4 points 7 months ago

I also had an ejabberd running for my family. Configured all the XEPs that take it into the current century. Had Conversations as a client for Android and Monal on iOS. No problems at all - apart from Monal being a bit wonky at times. But I assume these bugs are all fixed by now.

Also, Conversations is THE XMPP client. The guy behind it is involved in lots of XMPP stuff. And Monal tries to be the same for the iOS world.

But similarly, we all switched to Telegram over time as that's where my parent's friends are, too.

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