Hello, I would like to hear your opinions about a good selfhosted messenger like discord.
To list exactly what I mean by that is:
- No need for federation ( only will be used by friends )
- E2EE
- Support for direct messages
- Support for discord like server management by which I mean the ability to set rooms and topics for such rooms.
From what I know, this seems to be more similar to slack alternative’s but wanted to hear opinions of others.
I have been thinking about either matrix, mattermost, rocket.chat or revolt chat.
I already have a XMPP server, but setting up encryption and client’s has turned away quite a few people I would like to get onto this platform.
EDIT: As pointed by other people E2EE isn’t needed for my usecase if no federation.
Do you even need E2EE if it’s a private server with no federation? It seems like transport encryption would be fine which almost everything has.
That’s a fine but, as long as the server was hosted at my personal devices, which it isn’t but on a hetzner dedicated box. Which is still better than on shared pc’s.
Don’t really need it, it’s just nice to have.
If you’re worried about unauthorized access to the physical machine, you could always just do disk-level encryption instead or store the app’s data in something like a Veracrypt virtual disk. They’d still be able to access the data if they go through your OS/user, but wouldn’t pick anything up by accessing the drive directly.
Nothing short of E2EE can truly stop someone from accessing your data if they have physical access to the server, but disk encryption would require a targeted attack to break, and no host is wasting their time targeting your meme server. I seriously doubt they’d access it even if you had no encryption at all, since if they get caught doing that they’d get in a heap of legal trouble and lose a ton of business.
That’s why I said E2EE is nice to have, but not required.
It still has to transit networks, and I’m assuming they’re using the internet.
Anymore, all comms (even local), should be encrypted.
That is what transport encryption does.
Yeah most things support transport encryption, SSL for example with HTTPS.
Matrix is pretty user friendly imo but you will not get data-gobbler‘s levels of convenience because they have billions to invest in the software, FOSS doesnt. It works out of the box mostly but you as admin need to be quite adept.
Revolt is self-hostable. It isn’t E2EE but if you’re controlling the users anyways transport encryption should be enough since you have control over the data anyway.
I tried to set this up recently but failed. I wish there was a up to date noob friendly guide for this. IIRC some containers, mongodb was one of them, didn’t go healthy.
I never actually tried myself, but it seems like the documentation certainly could be improved. I saw that they provide a Docker compose, so perhaps that could be of help if you didn’t use that the last time around. They are currently in the process of cleaning up the projects to make things more maintainable and easier to get an overview, so let’s hope things might improve a bit. I think for me personally, this certainly seems like the most promising Discord replacement because it feels like a set and get solution for non-techy people trying to switch instead of relearning everything like with Matrix.
Update: Ended up setting up a mattermost server.
Main reason cause it’s the easiest to setup as it only need 2 containers.
Edit: Might create a specific team just for selfhosters where people from this lemmy community can talk about posts there, or generally about selfhosting
Edit 2: I have created “Casual selfhosters” team on my mattermost instance, will create a post either later today or tommorow promoting it, but for now will leave an invite link here so feel free to join in and talk about selfhosting! [https://mm.cronyakatsuki.xyz/signup_user_complete/?id=trbsbo38c3bu7kqirx644wcqiw&md=link&sbr=fa](Invite link)
For XMPP, have you looked into using snikket? It does most things you’d want out of the box without having to setup extensions yourself.
Mattermost isn’t e2ee, but if the server is run by someone competent and they’re allowed to see everything anyway (eg it’s all group chat, and they’re in all the groups) then e2ee isn’t as important as it would be otherwise as it is only protecting against the server being compromised (a scenario which, if you’re using web-based solutions which do have e2ee, also leads to circumvention of it).
If you’re OK with not having e2ee, I would recommend Zulip over Mattermost. Mattermost is nice too though.
edit: oops, i see you also want DMs… Mattermost and Zulip both have them, but without e2ee. 😢
I could write a book about problems with Matrix, but if you want something relatively easy and full featured with (optional, and non-forward-secret) e2ee then it is probably your best bet today.
I remember setting up a TeamSpeak server back in 2012 before Discord took over. Worked for us at the time.
Mumble is the go-to solution for that these days. Even has a nice Android client.
My friend group uses discord just for screen sharing. All voice comes are still in TS. It’s funny to boot up discord and see 9 people in the same channel all muted with streams going.
Matrix is nice and Mattermost is basically self hosted Slack. Probably better off with Matrix, if you don’t need voice. Mattermost I’d you do. Rocket chat seems nice as well. I’d probably run Matrix and Mumble?
We ran RocketChat at work for a few years before migrating to Teams.
RC could be good, but maintaining it long-term was an enormous pain. Maybe it’s better now, certainly if you’re using docker… But a manual install was always a laborious task on upkeep for us. Also worth making sure you don’t need commercial features, as they’ve removed free features in the past to drive sales…
Yeah, for business I use both and Slack is quite nice to work with. Everyone forgets the hidden cost of running your own chat server. It’s fine for a hobby, but I’d always have a larger company run critical back end services. They have the time and the money to invest in keeping things working when it matters most.
Matrix does support voice, and I found the quality to be amazing.
Slack is crap and matter most has mimicked all its worst parts.
Zulip is pretty nice and I think it resembled discord the most out of the software I know
I’ve just started a Zulip POC and it’s been decent so far. Definitely resembles Discord.
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Revolt will be perfect for you it perfectly mimics the Discord UI/UX, and you don’t need E2EE if you are in control of the server
For me it’s very hard to convince my friends to move from discord. I myself run matrix server on dedicated machine.
Pretty bad experience with matrix here. Many users have issues with decrypting messages or having some conversations unable to open. Sometimes we have to disable the encryption, and in some case it don’t work either. In all cases, we couldn’t find too old messages. Usually you have to balance between safety and archives; both are unreliable. Migrating a community to a specific protocol is not something you could repeat a lot.
I don’t know if it’s related with the servers, or with the protocol itself. I suspect that things get ugly when your conversations are too big, but it could be the latency between servers, or lack of ressources from server side. If so, you have consider to selfhost a matrix server, or to consider it as not federated, and use the server matrix.org like everyone (which seems to work fine).
use the server matrix.org like everyone (which seems to work fine).
Suggesting to use matrix.org as “everyone” uses it ? There are other choices instead of making a big flagship instance bigger.
I have a Matrix account on https://tchncs.de since years. Though I don’t use it often, the admin seems to do a good job and provides bridges.
Yea, matrix is too much for that I need, an dhave seted up a mattermost server for my needs.
Planning to create a selfhosted team on it for the people of this communitty to talk real time about selfhosting and help each other fix issues in a more timelly and easier manner.
If you need E2EE there’s only Matrix. I wish it wasn’t the only option, but it is. For setting up rooms and so on you can use their Spaces feature, I think.
I’ve been looking for an alternative, too: https://feddit.de/post/8502516
