A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.
Resources:
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
matthew the ceo addressed aot of the criticisms recently, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyuqM7RbX5E
transcript with links: https://gist.github.com/ara4n/190ad712965d0f06e17f508d1a45b554
other than that, push notifications work fine for me with Ntfy. but as I heard matrix.org hs users have problems, possibly because of serverside firewall issues, investigation is stuck somehow
Matrix works perfectly for me, if you're setting up a new server, I'd go with tuwunel. I'm stuck on synapse, when the tuwunel team makes a way to migrate, I'll do it.
I believe the machines are currently struggling against the humans
Unable to decrypt message. Please try again.
This is quite annoying. When will devs learn to tell people to resolve the problem instead of just showing a pointless error messages?
afaik those errors can't really be solved by users. I mean other than using an up to date client and server.
While I appreciate the joke, I have not seen that problem in quite some time :D
I've last seen it last month. And I have an old chat, where FluffyChat and ("old") Element show all messages by now, but Element X can't decrypt many and both Elements report that they can't guarantee the authenticity of many messages (even my own). For a long time, my chat partner could only read messages I sent via FluffyChat but not those sent by Element. I have not checked if that is still the case.
definetly report the problem. there's a function for it in the app, 3 points menu on the chat list menu, use it after making those errors show up. tick the contact me box. ceo recommends to also notify himself directly: https://gist.github.com/ara4n/190ad712965d0f06e17f508d1a45b554
Some months ago, I had UTD issues with Element X too. My hs has been up for some years, and the devs claimed they had done a lot to fix UTDs.
I was about to bring the server down, but as a last resort decided to log out all but one Element web session which was able to decrypt the messages and try resetting the key backup. Haven't had any UTD issues since then.
Maybe worth a try.
"can't guarantee the authenticity of this message" just means it was restored from backup. In the same vein, if you can decrypt a message in any client, it should upload the keys to the message backup so it can be decrypted on other clients, even ones that haven't logged in.
I've only seen this message in the last months where different servers are having network issues and can't talk
Ha!
The many small bugs make Matrix still bad - I wouldn't recommend a non-tech user unless accompanied by a 24/7 admin. It is trying to improve but very slow because of reasons
damn, was not expecting to see so much hate towards matrix.
it sure was annoying to set up, but once I got it up the way I wanted, it kind of just worked from that moment on. I’ve had it for some 5 months now and it works as intended with no issues, aside from some small glitches here and there which get fixed very fast (on the mobile app).
my use case was getting off Discord with a bunch of friends, so we needed a reliable way to have multiple chats, channels/rooms and good voice chat with screen sharing. element call does those well. my federation is of course also closed. for me e2ee is just a bonus
I think that if that’s your use case, it’s good for that. synapse does seem a bit inefficient but I guess you can’t do much about it
My experience is the same as yours, but I think the people complaining are the ones who are federated and are in large communities. Matrix apparently doesnt handle large rooms very well.
fair enough, that’s true. it was one of the reasons I turned off federation, even on a beefy server synapse still lagged and timed out when I would join medium sized rooms.
Damn. That sucks. (Edit: Referring to the comments saying Matrix is dead and dying.)
I get that IRC and XMPP are more stable and built around federation from the ground up, but... they're not Discord replacements.
That was IMHO, the point of Matrix/Element.
Tell me if I'm wrong, but a significant part of a network's resilience is the number of nodes and users.
Without a glowup or some kind of repackaging, IRC/XMPP are doomed to stay niche.
Well Discord started as a replacement for IRC and TeamSpeak/Mumble, then began to add more and more things and got used as a forum replacement and everything went down the hill. Why not going back to the roots? We had fucking IRC scripts for matchmaking in Q3CTF.
Discord has quite a few good features that IRC doesn't. I will agree that it being used as a replacement for a forum, while also being unsearchable, is amazingly stupid. However, it's used by almost everyone for a reason, and to ignore that (if you were to develop and alternative) ensures you won't succeed. Yeah, we don't need every feature from Discord, but easy voice/text/video chats, image/file sharing, and all the other useful things are required. Yeah, we can probably lose the emotes and crap and be fine.
I wouldn't mind going back to IRC roots if it could be made more user friendly and integrate voice and video chat.
Good UX/UI goes a long way to make it so non-technical people can join and strengthen the network.
Xmpp supports group chat, 1:1 messaging, you've got webtrc support for voice/video, and its extensible.
Jingle even has screen sharing (and I think a WIP remote control function).
What is missing from xmpp?
Technically, nothing.
In practice, who do you know that's using it and doesn't run Arch, by the way?
My point isn't that IRC/XMPP aren't technically capable.
It's that they're not designed for non-technical users.
I want corporate social media to die. Mastodon and Piefed are far from killing the beast, but they've made the more progress than most projects have seen in a long time.
I want corporate messaging to die. Matrix is far from killing the beast, but for a little while, at least it was trying.
Quicksy and Prav apps allow you to easily signup via SMS verification like WhatApp etc. Super easy and the app works like Whatsapp, completely usable for non technical users (much more so than any Matrix client).
And Snikket is an super easy all in one solution for running a XMPP based small group server with invite based onboarding. Also completely non-technical user compatible.
In practice, who do you know that's using it and doesn't run Arch, by the way?
Well I mostly run Debian, but I do have arch on a machine so maybe I don't count.
It's that they're not designed for non-technical users.
Have to agree there, it takes some effort if you're setting it up for friends and family.
Snikket was easy to setup for my family.
I think judging something really depends on the requirements. No one said using technology was going to be simple and easy. We should make it as easy as we can do, but no more than that. There's still a lot of room for improvement. But in the end the commercial services are geared towards convenience. And they'll always outpace us. We have to set up servers and jump through a few hoops so it's us in control of the network. There is no other feasible way to do it.
Though I really wish we had some messenger that makes encryption foolproof. And rock solid, and with a resource footprint of IRC when concerned with text messages, but not limited to that.
I had the same experience as OP when I tried Matrix a few years ago. No hate on it but it was not easy and I gave up because I already had a simple IRC setup that's working for me and my friends.
Some IRC clients are now web based and it's been enough to keep a few of my friends there instead of Discord. We use The Lounge. It can keep a history, display images, videos, play mp3s, and show previews of most URLs. Like, we can simply copy/paste images into a channel and they are uploaded on the server and displayed in the chat. There's also push notifications and it's mobile friendly.
Convos also does something like this. Apparently it can also do video chat but I've never got it to work.
I've recently been thinking about giving Matrix another try but I'm pretty sure my friends are going to stay on "modern" IRC anyway.
I host my tuwunnel server and I am happy with it. The lack of a top level client is my turn down. Element X is good but still lacking, and fluffy chat is maybe better looking but more lacking.
My matrix use case is only WhatsApp and telegram backup using the bridges, actually... So YMMV.
My experience as well, though you might take a look at the recent fluffy chat 2.0 release. It is the closest to a usable client.
But I agree and it's baffling to me how a project backed by so many organisations and a considerable amount of cash fails to deliver even a decent user experience.
It's still bad, and the foundation keeps digging itself into a deeper and deeper hole. Dead project.
Absolutely unbased take. Please ignore.
Matrix works fine, I have hosted a server on my own for several years through an ansible playbook here.
IRC and XMPP are infinitely less painful, honestly, and both were designed around federation from the ground up, long before it was cool.
Matrix works good. Two years ago Element should've been what element Next is today. But it is getting there. It still has great backers and lots of users. As long as there is no direct alternative, it'll get there.
I don't want american companies owning all my data and neither do companies want that.
It's not the shiny new kid anymore but there is no other new shiny kid. Hence, it is still the brightest and newest kid.
I didn't like synapse or dendrite at all, but conduit has been great.
I set it up during the outage last week.
Easy enough to just pull in the synapse docker container and run it on my home server. I wireguard it to my VPS that acts as a reverse proxy.
Both federation and push notifications work.
If you want a conduwuit sucessor, I'd choose the continuwuity project over tuwunel. The legitimacy as the sucessor is mainly self-proclaimed, and continuwuity is a community effort. The entire thing is kind of a shitshow, though. If you want to do it like 99% of people, make friends with Synapse.
I think what you describe still holds true. You need a few correct DNS entries and an open port. Once you want VoIP, some more ports and a TURN server will be necessary. And that one took me some effort, but the server itself (including federation) was well within my comfort zone. And I run continuwuity these days because Synapse wastes way too much resources for what I do and their other efforts went nowhere. But I'm not sure about the future of those smaller Matrix server projects.
And if you don't like Matrix or can't get it to run, maybe try something like XMPP.
If you want a conduwuit sucessor, I’d choose the continuwuity project over tuwunel.
You realise that sounds insane, right?
Sure, I believe that is supposed to be uWu or maybe some kind of puppy talk. It's certainly originally started by June, who turned conduit (which is a sane name) into conduwuit.
I figured I've lost all shame anyway, back when we discussed nerd topics in the school bus or the 5 'o clock train, like Linux lore, anime, Star Trek concepts and technobabble. I mean people were staring and I'm aware of that, but I've really lost all F*'s to give. And that turns me into the person who I am today, and I'll happily write sentences like the one above. Or still talk about Star Trek in a crowded train. And these days it's the mycelial network and that really makes people question my sanity. 🫠
Way back in 2023, Matrix was the jack of all trades but the master of none. It wanted to replace Discord but the video messaging was not stable enough. It wanted to replace Slack but message searching didn't really work. It was still struggling to get a decent client and server implementation, and message loading times were a huge pain point.
Fast forward to today, most of the problems are still there. Give it a couple more years to cook.
It's been a solid tool for hosting just for myself to bridge all the different platforms/protocols that people want to talk to me using, but there is no way I would recommend it to anyone else. I don't know if it will ever get to a point where it works well enough for me to recommend. If you do want to host a server though, I strongly recommend matrix docker ansible deploy to do so.
Agree, AFAIC it's only good at bridging protocols. Most likely an ecosystem advantage more than a protocol one.
I've been wanting to get matrix up for my family and friends to chat with my 6 year old on her tablet. I found nextcloud talk to do all the things I wanted with none of the hassle. My daughter is a ridiculous texter.
My matrix server is nearing 5 years old. I have federation disabled, because I don't need that - we are using it as a family chat. sqlite database I'm using is now 2GB, but other than that it is working great.
I do acknowledge that I'm not leveraging the things matrix is designed for (federation, e2e encryption), but to be honest, it's not really good at that.
Tbh I had no issues with synapse.
The problems that persist: Very rare issues with decrypting (as I rarely encounter it, while being in encrypted chats with 150+ users, it's not an issue for me), apart from after you changed clients, slow image loading (a bit annoying, but ok if you multitask anyway) and clients all having different feature sets (some of which you can also hackily make work in others).