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Running an XMPP server is dead simple, just install Prosody and make few simple edits to the configuration and you're set. It hardly takes any resources (32 MB

Running an XMPP server is dead simple, just install Prosody and make few simple edits to the configuration and you're set. It hardly takes any resources (32 MB resident on my server) so it can happily live on whatever server you're already using. You will want to add some records to your domain to make it all run smoothly but this is well-documented and even works fine on free DNS providers like Namecheap and Cloudflare. Once you've done that you just install Conversations (from F-Droid, of course) and something like Gajim or Dino-im on your laptops and you'll bask in the glory of evading the surveillance dragnet because you're using OMEMO encryption which works end-to-end. If you happen to have Jitsi Meet installed you'll already have an XMPP server up and running to which you can add some configuration to make it useable for this purpose. Source: this is what I've been doing for many years

rglullis 3y ago
Ok, now go try to convince your 70 year-old father, who is using iOS, to join you and to use it as your primary means of conversation. I'm not being facetious. Try that, and then try doing it with Matrix/Element. Tell me which one do you end up with.
- MattJ100 3y ago
  Did you try it? What were the pain points?
  - rglullis 3y ago
    The first time I did this exercise was in 2018 (when I first set up an XMPP server and Matrix Synapse for Communick) and there simply wasn't any working iOS app. Monal was the only app I found and managed to install for him. It did chat only and would crash. I do not recall to get e2ee working and the fact that it is optional made things confusing even for me - e.g, I wasn't able to switch between a desktop client and Conversations easily. Element (then called riot.im) managed to do text, audio and video calls. The app had some bugs, but nothing that would block me from calling each other. The UX can still be confusing and I have occasional conversations where my father complains he can not hear me, most of them caused by my father not knowing that kept the video call but switched to the internal phone speaker instead of the external one. I heard about Siskin some months ago. Honestly, I haven't tried it yet. It might be that is fully functional, but the UI is so bare that there is no way that I'll be able to convince my father to switch to it. He still complains that he'd rather use WhatsApp like everyone else, so whatever XMPP brings now will be a case of "too little, too late".
    - the_third_wave 3y ago
      The problem here is not XMPP or Conversations but the closed nature of iOS which keeps apps like Conversations from being ported there. Apple does not like competition to iMessage or to its app store revenues so it fights tooth and nail to keep its precious as is now clearly on view in Europe with their ridiculous 'core technology fees' and other shenanigans. Maybe you can give your father a non-iOS phone if that is what is keeping your experiment from succeeding? We're all on Android here, anything from stock Samsung like my mother uses to self-built LineageOS like I use and we have no problems like you describe. I video-chat daily with my mother without problems, we're using Jitsi Meet (hosted on the same server) for larger video meetings, we've used Nextcloud Talk (also hosted on that server-under-the-stairs) as well but now mostly use Conversations. Telegram also works well for video chat but that is neither self-hosted nor end-to-end encrypted so it is not a real comparison to Matrix or XMPP with OMEMO.
      - rglullis 3y ago
        > Maybe you can give your father a non-iOS phone if that is what is keeping your experiment from succeeding? That's a non-starter. He already had Android phones before, never liked them. O have to pick my battles, and getting him to call me Matrix instead of WhatsApp was already enough to call it success. Besides, my point was less about the specific individual but the systemic issue. iOS is too large of a market segment to ignore, and I can not go around telling everyone "hey, why don't you just drop your shit Apple device and switch to something more open?"
  - yaky 3y ago
    Not the person you asked, but here are some pain points asking my relatives (30s and 60s) to switch: "WhatsApp works fine, I talk to you on there already" (in reality, via a Matrix-WhatsApp bridge) "Who am i going to talk to on there?" (Me?) "I don't want to install another app" (but installing ad-laden Viber is fine...) "I cannot share pictures to Element so I sent it to you through [iOS] Messages" (well, Element removed share capabilities in iOS due to a rare bug) Simply ignoring messages (their iMessage and calls rings from all connected devices, but Element just notifies once)
    - rakoo 3y ago
      All of this is absolutely valid, but none of this is specific to the XMPP/Matrix ecosystems
- the_third_wave 3y ago
  My father is dead so I don't think I can reach him through XMPP - at least not yet. My 85 yo mother is still alive and yes, she is using Conversations on her Samsung A25 which connects to prosody on my server through which she communicates with all of us. I live in Sweden, she lives in the Netherlands, one of my daughters now studies in the Netherlands as well. We have a 'family list' (i.e. a 'multi-user chat' using the muc extension) where we share photos and anecdotes, sometimes we 'talk' one on one. Everything encrypted through OMEMO so Feind hört NICHT mitt. I have tried Matrix/Element (self-hosted, of course, like everything else I use) and found it lacking compared to XMPP. It just seems to add needless complexity and does not offer anything worthwhile to compensate for it. I tried some Matrix bridges as well but found these lacking for my purposes. So the answer to your question is 'I ended up with XMPP'.

rglullis 3y ago

Ok, now go try to convince your 70 year-old father, who is using iOS, to join you and to use it as your primary means of conversation. I'm not being facetious. Try that, and then try doing it with Matrix/Element. Tell me which one do you end up with.

MattJ100 3y ago
Did you try it? What were the pain points?
- rglullis 3y ago
  The first time I did this exercise was in 2018 (when I first set up an XMPP server and Matrix Synapse for Communick) and there simply wasn't any working iOS app. Monal was the only app I found and managed to install for him. It did chat only and would crash. I do not recall to get e2ee working and the fact that it is optional made things confusing even for me - e.g, I wasn't able to switch between a desktop client and Conversations easily. Element (then called riot.im) managed to do text, audio and video calls. The app had some bugs, but nothing that would block me from calling each other. The UX can still be confusing and I have occasional conversations where my father complains he can not hear me, most of them caused by my father not knowing that kept the video call but switched to the internal phone speaker instead of the external one. I heard about Siskin some months ago. Honestly, I haven't tried it yet. It might be that is fully functional, but the UI is so bare that there is no way that I'll be able to convince my father to switch to it. He still complains that he'd rather use WhatsApp like everyone else, so whatever XMPP brings now will be a case of "too little, too late".
  - the_third_wave 3y ago
    The problem here is not XMPP or Conversations but the closed nature of iOS which keeps apps like Conversations from being ported there. Apple does not like competition to iMessage or to its app store revenues so it fights tooth and nail to keep its precious as is now clearly on view in Europe with their ridiculous 'core technology fees' and other shenanigans. Maybe you can give your father a non-iOS phone if that is what is keeping your experiment from succeeding? We're all on Android here, anything from stock Samsung like my mother uses to self-built LineageOS like I use and we have no problems like you describe. I video-chat daily with my mother without problems, we're using Jitsi Meet (hosted on the same server) for larger video meetings, we've used Nextcloud Talk (also hosted on that server-under-the-stairs) as well but now mostly use Conversations. Telegram also works well for video chat but that is neither self-hosted nor end-to-end encrypted so it is not a real comparison to Matrix or XMPP with OMEMO.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      > Maybe you can give your father a non-iOS phone if that is what is keeping your experiment from succeeding? That's a non-starter. He already had Android phones before, never liked them. O have to pick my battles, and getting him to call me Matrix instead of WhatsApp was already enough to call it success. Besides, my point was less about the specific individual but the systemic issue. iOS is too large of a market segment to ignore, and I can not go around telling everyone "hey, why don't you just drop your shit Apple device and switch to something more open?"
- yaky 3y ago
  Not the person you asked, but here are some pain points asking my relatives (30s and 60s) to switch: "WhatsApp works fine, I talk to you on there already" (in reality, via a Matrix-WhatsApp bridge) "Who am i going to talk to on there?" (Me?) "I don't want to install another app" (but installing ad-laden Viber is fine...) "I cannot share pictures to Element so I sent it to you through [iOS] Messages" (well, Element removed share capabilities in iOS due to a rare bug) Simply ignoring messages (their iMessage and calls rings from all connected devices, but Element just notifies once)
  - rakoo 3y ago
    All of this is absolutely valid, but none of this is specific to the XMPP/Matrix ecosystems
the_third_wave 3y ago
My father is dead so I don't think I can reach him through XMPP - at least not yet. My 85 yo mother is still alive and yes, she is using Conversations on her Samsung A25 which connects to prosody on my server through which she communicates with all of us. I live in Sweden, she lives in the Netherlands, one of my daughters now studies in the Netherlands as well. We have a 'family list' (i.e. a 'multi-user chat' using the muc extension) where we share photos and anecdotes, sometimes we 'talk' one on one. Everything encrypted through OMEMO so Feind hört NICHT mitt. I have tried Matrix/Element (self-hosted, of course, like everything else I use) and found it lacking compared to XMPP. It just seems to add needless complexity and does not offer anything worthwhile to compensate for it. I tried some Matrix bridges as well but found these lacking for my purposes. So the answer to your question is 'I ended up with XMPP'.