4 ms·

Hey there, Saul from the Jitsi team :-) Self-hosting is one of the use cases we spend a lot of time on, recently venturing into a hybrid model with JaaS compon

by saghul 3y ago

Hey there, Saul from the Jitsi team :-) Self-hosting is one of the use cases we spend a lot of time on, recently venturing into a hybrid model with JaaS components. If there is any pain point with self-hosting, please let us know!

kuba-orlik 3y ago
I seem to always have trouble with video freezing or very low quality audio+video. Jitsi just isn't reliable enough for me. We've switched to BigBlueButton on the same type of server and it runs gloriously, with HD video, crisp audio. I kept giving Jitsi a chance, but it disappointed us too many times
tourmalinetaco 3y ago
Hey! I just want to let you know that Jitsi is a fantastic project and it’s almost entirely replaced any proprietary services I used previously. Thank you for your hard work!
- saghul 3y ago
  Thank you!
jamal-kumar 3y ago
I've set one up before when the pandemic was in full swing. I haven't really been stuck in group call hell for well over a year with my work now but at the time I was really impressed about how much higher the video and audio quality was over what zoom had at the time. The only complaint we had was the mobile performance. Made older phones hot and killed the battery fast. Other than that great software suite!
PuffinBlue 3y ago
A serious pain point is that Jitsi stopped supporting Ubuntu 18.04 with no warning, well before its EoL date. An update led to a dependency issue (I would have to go remind myself which but I think Prosody) and that was that - just a ‘well lets stop supporting Ubuntu 18.04 then’. I think over time the advice has been to go manually downgrade some packages or try and find the relevant versions somewhere. A more satisfactory solution would be to support the up to date versions of dependencies available to the distribution jitsi is installed on. We’re getting to the point where this doesn’t matter of course, as 18.04 goes end of life. But you can understand why we are reluctant to recommend jitsi as a stable and reliably maintained option after this experience.
no_time 3y ago
Hi Saul, I attempted self hosting it on an RPI4 but the video quality was dropping heavily and stopping alltogether from time to time. I did not see an obvious bottleneck anywhere in the system. The rpi had both ram and cpu to spare, my connection is 1gbps down, 100mbps up. Should be more than enough for two people. This was early this year. I followed the official guide word-to-word. Others reported similar issues on the official forum so my issue isnt new or unique.
- RobotToaster 3y ago
  Just a guess, but was the rpi connected over wifi? IIRC the wifi isn't that great on the pi4.
  - no_time 3y ago
    Good guess, but I tried both WIFI and Ethernet. Both exhibited the same dropping. I'm not even sure if the rpi played any part except signalling.
zzless 3y ago
Just wanted to say thanks as well. I host a private Jitsi server for my online teaching. It took a bit of effort to set up but worked well for me since.
meatmanek 3y ago
Public documentation on how to automatically install + configure the Debian packages would be great (i.e. using debconf-set-selections). I've figured it out from forum posts, etc. in the past, but it keeps changing, causing my installation scripts to get stuck waiting for user input.
rosmax_1337 3y ago
Hey, I'm part of a team that self hosts a jitsi instance. I've made a small plugin that uses some CSS-hacks to make the buttons in the bottom of the call also have text, and not just icons. It makes it much easier to explain to someone which button you need to press to access the chat, or begin to screen share. Instead of sharing the ugly CSS-hacks here's just the list of what I've named the buttons, the CSS-hack isn't something I would expect to make it upstream so to say. From left to right: - Mic - Webcam - Screen share - Chat - Hey! (it's willingly ambiguous so that someone might stumble upon the feature in a exploratory manner, we don't really use the "raise hand" function in a serious way) - This call - Layout - More actions - Leave And lastly, thanks for making great software.
- myself248 3y ago
  THANK YOU "then press the three-lines" makes me feel debased as a human being, like I'm reduced to pictograms because language has been taken from me. That this isn't a standard part of every software, is part of what's gone wrong with UI/UX in the last decade or so.
  - Ballas 3y ago
    > "then press the three-lines" Hamburger menu? https://www.mobileapps.com/blog/hamburger-menu https://www.mobileapps.com/blog/hamburger-menu I share your disdain for this sort of UI, but then I'm content with a CLI...
    - knotsies 3y ago
      Also hate it, but "burger button" just rolls off the tongue

by saghul 3y ago

kuba-orlik 3y ago

I seem to always have trouble with video freezing or very low quality audio+video. Jitsi just isn't reliable enough for me. We've switched to BigBlueButton on the same type of server and it runs gloriously, with HD video, crisp audio. I kept giving Jitsi a chance, but it disappointed us too many times

tourmalinetaco 3y ago

Hey! I just want to let you know that Jitsi is a fantastic project and it’s almost entirely replaced any proprietary services I used previously. Thank you for your hard work!

saghul 3y ago
Thank you!

jamal-kumar 3y ago

I've set one up before when the pandemic was in full swing. I haven't really been stuck in group call hell for well over a year with my work now but at the time I was really impressed about how much higher the video and audio quality was over what zoom had at the time. The only complaint we had was the mobile performance. Made older phones hot and killed the battery fast. Other than that great software suite!

PuffinBlue 3y ago

A serious pain point is that Jitsi stopped supporting Ubuntu 18.04 with no warning, well before its EoL date. An update led to a dependency issue (I would have to go remind myself which but I think Prosody) and that was that - just a ‘well lets stop supporting Ubuntu 18.04 then’. I think over time the advice has been to go manually downgrade some packages or try and find the relevant versions somewhere. A more satisfactory solution would be to support the up to date versions of dependencies available to the distribution jitsi is installed on. We’re getting to the point where this doesn’t matter of course, as 18.04 goes end of life. But you can understand why we are reluctant to recommend jitsi as a stable and reliably maintained option after this experience.

no_time 3y ago

Hi Saul, I attempted self hosting it on an RPI4 but the video quality was dropping heavily and stopping alltogether from time to time. I did not see an obvious bottleneck anywhere in the system. The rpi had both ram and cpu to spare, my connection is 1gbps down, 100mbps up. Should be more than enough for two people. This was early this year. I followed the official guide word-to-word. Others reported similar issues on the official forum so my issue isnt new or unique.

RobotToaster 3y ago
Just a guess, but was the rpi connected over wifi? IIRC the wifi isn't that great on the pi4.
- no_time 3y ago
  Good guess, but I tried both WIFI and Ethernet. Both exhibited the same dropping. I'm not even sure if the rpi played any part except signalling.

zzless 3y ago

Just wanted to say thanks as well. I host a private Jitsi server for my online teaching. It took a bit of effort to set up but worked well for me since.

meatmanek 3y ago

Public documentation on how to automatically install + configure the Debian packages would be great (i.e. using debconf-set-selections). I've figured it out from forum posts, etc. in the past, but it keeps changing, causing my installation scripts to get stuck waiting for user input.

rosmax_1337 3y ago

Hey, I'm part of a team that self hosts a jitsi instance. I've made a small plugin that uses some CSS-hacks to make the buttons in the bottom of the call also have text, and not just icons. It makes it much easier to explain to someone which button you need to press to access the chat, or begin to screen share. Instead of sharing the ugly CSS-hacks here's just the list of what I've named the buttons, the CSS-hack isn't something I would expect to make it upstream so to say. From left to right: - Mic - Webcam - Screen share - Chat - Hey! (it's willingly ambiguous so that someone might stumble upon the feature in a exploratory manner, we don't really use the "raise hand" function in a serious way) - This call - Layout - More actions - Leave And lastly, thanks for making great software.

myself248 3y ago
THANK YOU "then press the three-lines" makes me feel debased as a human being, like I'm reduced to pictograms because language has been taken from me. That this isn't a standard part of every software, is part of what's gone wrong with UI/UX in the last decade or so.
- Ballas 3y ago
  > "then press the three-lines" Hamburger menu? https://www.mobileapps.com/blog/hamburger-menu https://www.mobileapps.com/blog/hamburger-menu I share your disdain for this sort of UI, but then I'm content with a CLI...
  - knotsies 3y ago
    Also hate it, but "burger button" just rolls off the tongue