I want to setup a matrix instance to help increase friends and family’s privacy. Is there much value in creating my own instance?
I’m a beginner to linux and coding, but am good at following the steps on a video tutorial.
Alternatively i could get everyone to sign up on a preexisting instance + download the element app.
Thanks for sharing your opinions !
I would recommend you rather look at Snikket, which is a really easy to setup and use XMPP server with nice mobile clients. Perfect for a small family server and very easy to setup.
A Matrix home-server is not too difficult to setup either (conduit.rs is easiest IMHO), but in the medium term it is quite server resource intensive to run as it needs a relatively fast server and has an ever increasing database that can easily surpass the SSD storage available on cheaper VPS.
Appreciate your alternative here.
Why is Matrix so resource intensive compared to XMPP ?
Matrix is basically over-engineered for a chat protocol. It uses a very complex git like distributed database with high CPU and RAM demanding merging operation to ensure a consistent state between the participant servers. In addition this data-structure means that a lot of the meta-data (room-state) can never be erased and gets replicated on every server connecting.
XMPP on the other hand is specifically optimized to be highly scalable (proven to work with billions of users) and tries to minimizes the metadata data-sharing between servers (although that could still be improved).
I tried snikket but couldn’t get video calls to work unfortunately… Do you know of a good guide that explains how to do set up video calls?
It should work out of the box, but video calls are especially difficult to establish on some mobile phone networks using CG-NAT. Make sure you have the right ports open for STUN/TURN on your server, otherwise maybe ask on the Snikket support chat room?
Thanks. Do you know how to test if a phone network uses CG-NAT?
Basically all do, but some are worse then others. Check if it works when using the same wi-fi connection first.
deleted by creator
Its like a Linux distribution…not like Prosody itself that basically is like a “roll your own OS”. Snikket comes all preconfigured for the typical use-case of a small private server, has a few bleeding edge extensions like nicely integrated invites and a administrative GUI, and also has some rebranded clients (based on Conversations & Siskin) with some small usability improvements and preconfigured to work best with the Snikket server.
It is basically an attempt by one of the main Prosody developers to make XMPP more accessible and under a unified “brand” to solve some of the “too much choice” issues XMPP has.
My one prosody server has 3 different type of clients (including iOS and android), all sending fully end to end encrypted text, video, audio to each-other. Works very well.
In my opinion the “too much choice” is not an issue with XMPP. It’s users opting for convenience while sacrificing privacy. Most people avoid investing the time it takes to figure out XMPP, even if just using a client on a preexisting server.
I even saw that my server can talk to other XMPP servers. So technically, my family could receive messages from other users on different servers.
The thing about Snikket is, just like matrix, they get funding from shady sources.
See my comment above, to the best of my knowledge (and I somewhat know the developer) Snikket has only received funding from NLnet (a non-profit Netherlands based foundation in charge of the .nl domains) that was part of a larger grant by the EU Commission. That is about as non-shady as it gets and by the way the same as Lemmy has got. Otherwise the Snikket developers try to establish a hosting service, but AFAIK funding is tight as the above mentioned grant will end soon.
In any case, this is a faaaar cry from crypo-currency and venture capital funding that New Vector / Matrix has received (both in quantity and quality), so I don’t think it is fair to put them in the same bucket.
Thank you. I ended up doing this.
However snikket has some shady funding.
I went for prosody server and set my family up on conversations, blabber, and chatsecure clients. Works great for sending text, pics, videos, voice clips. All e2e encrypted !
As a linux beginner, it was prety easy to setup (provided you have the time). Only issue is with voice/video calls. They use p2p instead of going thru sever, so can’t connect well especially on mobile networks behind NAT. Apparently I need to setup up a stun & turn sever.