Snikket is meant to be super simple to self-host. Ejabberd has a web GUI that can make configuration easier.

History / sync is known as message archive management (MAM) & every normal modern client & server supports it. OMEMO uses same double-ratchet encryption & multiple clients as Matrix (with the same old client key dropping issues sadly). By default it does not support groups you are correct, however, FOSS Jitsi (& Zoom for that matter) is powered by XMPP under the hood & can be stood up by yourself.

Personally three of my circles have opted for separate Mumble servers for voice coms (I run one of them from my living room) as video is only ever rarely needed & the system resources is minimal. Having web cams on is seen as a chore & distraction sometimes. The only time video is helpful in my experience is screen share which is different—but screensharing is the worst tool for trying to do code pairing / debugging a terminal using upterm provides a crisper view experience, lower data/system requirements, & observers can optionally drive the remote session.

You could switch some of the problems with perf in switching away from the Python implementation server as well as Element clients but these support the most up-to-date features & the majority of users are now relying on these features that often don’t degrade graacefully.

The bigger issue is eventual consistency. Eventual consistency will not scale for small self-hosting. Every message & every attachment for every user in every chatroom they have joined must be duplicated to your server. This is why joining rooms sometmies takes 10 minutes. Even if you make this async from the client side instead of the current long wait, your server & storage are still taking the hit. A lot of small collectives had to drop their servers for performance & cost (read about yet another one today on the Techlore thread at c/privacy where now only Discord is used for realtime coms). This model is required to copycat the ability to search the entire history like the big, proprietary chat apps such as Slack/Telegram/Discord, but they are centralized so it is easier to manage—but its overuse for all announcement & trying to replace forums turns it into a black hole for information. Your small community probably does not need persistent chat like this—persistent info is lighter & easier to crawl as feeds & forums. With medium-sized servers shutting down, only the biggest & smallest hosts are still kicking with most metadata is largely centralized around Matrix.org who also hosts some of the other larger instances.

If you agree that chat can be chatter as well as ephemeral there is lightweight centralized chat in IRCv3 with TLS has most of the features you need with a longer legacy & massive choice for clients & XMPP for lightweight decentralized chat with a long legacy, client options too, & can be self-hosted in a bedroom on a toaster in comparison which increases the chances of self-hosters & decentralization. These were built in a time when we didn’t have such wasteful taste in tech since they needed to be efficient & only sip power/data in comparison both for clients & servers & storage. The bigger question IMO is what are fundamentally wrong with these two mature options that we need a new option built on unextensible JSON & Israeli Intelligence money?

Exactly. Our words matter & the sooner we stop using Google to mean search or MS GitHub to mean code, the sooner we can start shifting the narritive towards entities that better respect our privacy or even gasp self-hosting. Word choice for social change is just as important for spreading the message.

Hardening aside, I like that LibreWolf actually lets you turn on JPEG XL.

If you want a rush, try gyukuro. Flavor of an umami green tea with the caffeine level of a cup of coffee & high L-thiamine to cut the jitters.

I lived it the UK briefly & my roommate never understood my fascination generally preferring his Yorkshire tea (trash). One day he asked about it so I made him a mug (we used coffee mugs). He said it tasted like yard clippings like other green teas before walking off continuing to sip to not waste it. He comes back in 15–20 minutes later over halfway finished, “Did you put drugs in this‽”. “Nope.” “I feel like I want to run a marathon. Okay, I see the appeal for your mornings, but this is the worst high ever.”

client or server that doesn’t support the same encryption protocols

Outside of TLS which most any server uses by default, XMPP or not, the server is not responsible for E2EE. Conversations Compliance & Are We OMEMO Yet have existed for a long while & I never see anyone recommending a client not on these lists so while certain features may be fragmented, the communication essentials have been more or less established for years now. XMPP is an extensible format, and some applications that aren’t for chatting with your friends/family, don’t need many of these features which allows the protocol to morph into something stripped down for the task… which is why the base spec is basically barren, & community XEPs are what folks get behind for adding new features for different use cases.

The best is to not trust the centralized server of either of these platforms. Set up your own XMPP server & gives these the boot.

This isn’t speaking, but writing (or typing). Using ‘correct’ spelling & grammar helps ESL speakers read the language as well as those relying on text translation software. Some folks make typos & it’s fine to make mistakes but it’s also strange to act like it’s just as easy to understand. Apostrophes have a specific meaning & many folks rely on them for understanding.

I’m learning a foreign language now & I can tell you it is a massive stumbling block when you run into what you think is a new word, but is ‘just’ a misspelling.

My issue with this account is not its corrections, but if you want to be the correction bot, at least get the typography right too. ' is as ASCII holdover & it should be ’.

It’s not more work--it’s often what should have been chosen in the first place as it meets the minimum requirements for the task, is ‘free’ to use, & isn’t wasteful on resources (both their servers & users’ clients). For those not in a the free/ethical software space this may be untrue, but in the space it’s hypocritical to say your software believes in those values but our communication platforms have a different set of rules. It’s also not just just “purity” but accessibility as Discord has ToS not everyone can agree to & has to comply with US sanctions on who is allowed to use the service that something self or independently-hosted don’t have to deal with. It feels more of the reverse in that you are suggesting communities be poisoned by proprietary platforms.

Meanwhile the OCaml IRC chat gets spam from Discord Crypto bots due to bridging with that proprietary platform.

I have a 1½-year-old laptop AMD Ryzen 6860Z processor & get 9 hours on the regular running NixOS doing programming/browsing/chat. That’s not quite 8 hours with 30% to spare, but good enough that I don’t worry about carrying my charger (but being lightweight GaN, normally keep it in my bag just in case). Apple folks have this tendency to think all their hardware is massively better, but even if it’s ‘better’, it’s often just by a small margin that doesn’t make a big difference--especially when you factor in cost.