Do you prefer XMPP or Matrix, or are you using something else entirely?
The problem is that “Discord” means something else for almost anyone and there is no alternative that 100% covers all the usecases.
For many public chats, IRC with a modern server and client is perfectly suitable, and for my private gaming sessions Mumble is as voice chat is doing fine even though friends are complaining that they can’t just use it in a browser.
For general IM stuff XMPP is best, but I guess few people use Discord for that. Matrix is in general slow and clunky, no real point of using that except if you are forced to because some very specific FOSS projects insist on using it.
P.S.: I mostly use IRC through a XMPP gateway.
IMHO XMPP is far more architecturally sound and not driven by buzzword-development.
IMHO XMPP is far more architecturally sound
I lost track of the technical status of IRC long ago so maybe it can do this too. XMPP at least, can support true E2EE, not just end to server. My mates and I use that for normal chatting, sending our vacation pics around, photos of our kids with their new puppy, things like that.
It’s worked well. Free of big-tech. Hopefully free of snoops and mass surveillance. I’m 100% sure any three letter agency could get in, if one ever cared to hear us prattling on about microbrews. The point is to opt out of the information dragnet, not to be all Jason Bourne.
XMPP has been the cat’s pajamas so far.
Why did you two opt for XMPP rather than Signal Messenger?
When me and my mates set this up, Signal was only available on phones, not desktops. It also required providing a phone number to a central authority, which some of us were not comfortable doing. With XMPP we got the choice of a large number of clients to pick from. Both the server and the clients were lightweight.
I just had a search maybe you can self host a Signal server, but I did not know that at the time. I wanted to self-host. So that was a reason too, but maybe (?) a false reason. The Signal self hosting situation may be murky. My brief search found some claims that the official app does not support using other servers, and you need a customized app to do it. It might be more self host-able in theory than in practice. XMPP had multiple servers to pick from, and lots of clients.
All those things could balance more toward Signal if your priorities are different, tho.
Yeah the self-hosting thing is new, its really clunky and they dont encourage you not to use it. I think (?) they may have even discontinued it.
Its odd to me that Signal is supposedly the gold standard yet it breaks all these privacy 101 rules. Such as requiring you hand over your phone number to a central authority, not really allowing you to self host, and not posting an official app on fdroid. I’ve heard that portions of its official repo are not even open source (though I haven’t verified this for myself). XMPP sounds like the better choice to be honest.
maybe the phone number requirement on signal? that would be a dealbreaker if any of them didn’t have one
It also might be a dealbreaker from a privacy perspective. It’s weird that Signal, which is supposedly the gold standard, has this requirement.
Given you propose to chose between 2 federated solutions, I assume you want a good robust federation. So it’s easy: XMPP, period.
Anyone who has experienced self-hosting knows Matrix is several times heavier on memory and CPU than XMPP, and that’s one of the reasons 99% of the Matrix users are on 1 server, while I actually dnn’t even know which XMPP server is the largest.:
Why has IRC not been mentioned? The basics of Discords UX is based on it after all.
I prefered xmpp. But either xmpp or matrix arent discord alternatives
Xmpp. Looks less polished, but works better, and isn’t mostly controlled by the ex-Amdocs Matrix Foundation.
Do you prefer XMPP or Matrix
Yes* - I haven’t used Discord in a long time as its bloat simply doesn’t interest me, but for communicating with folk:
Matrix, at least for me, is great, but the most capable mobile client Element has many broken or missing features.
Classic, but not X, has:- working calls via STUN/TURN,
- an emoji menu,
- correctly showing chat profile images (X duplicates the most recent one for all chats),
- and the ability to create unencrypted group chats (purely for public memes).
X, but not Classic, has:
- attachment captions,
- HD images,
- markdown support,
- a more modern UI,
- and (when it works) fully encrypted 1-1 and conference calls via Matrix Livekit.
I currently dual-wield the two because neither is enough yet, and most other clients lack call functionality entirely.
XMPP, at least for me, is nearly perfect. It just works and I find the fact that desktop clients still look like AOL Messenger quite charming. However it has:
- very manual encryption key management, meaning even I find trusting a new device daunting let alone any adopters,
- no backward decryption, meaning message history needs to be exported and transferred to a new device,
- plaintext serverside storage for several pieces of data. It’s my server so ownership isn’t a worry, but it’s a massive security risk in the albeit unlikely event of a hack or hijack.
I chose higher encryption and easier adoption between Matrix and XMPP but wish there was a more fulfilling option.
I also prefer xmpp, which I find more stable and easier to set up and maintain.
My gaming groups use Matrix, mainly for its stronger ecosystem and better long-term outlook. Despite developing slowly and not yet doing everything we want, Matrix is consistently improving and growing to serve more and more use cases. We’re willing to tolerate some inconveniences for now, in exchange for having the contact networks we build today continue to grow for decades to come. We use Mumble for voice chat, because it’s great, but might switch to MatrixRTC when Element Call leaves beta and becomes available in more Matrix clients.
I recently wrote up a few tips for Discord users considering Matrix.
If chat for a small gaming group was all I needed, I might choose XMPP. It’s arguably easier to administer than Matrix once you learn about all the XEPs required for comparable features (ease of admin is relevant to me because I self-host) and I would be able to guide a small group through client choices and setup. But I have found XMPP’s ecosystem to be a poor fit for large and diverse contact networks.
In my experience XMPP is easy to set up, lighter on resources, and the clients tend to work well across multiple platforms. We have small private and public groups using it daily with zero complaints.
Matrix tends to be more involved in setting up, and our group ran into issues where some clients weren’t working as smoothly or reliably as we needed for a primary communication platform. We also had a huge problem with traffickers of all sorts joining our rooms to spam their telegram links or CSAM. That hasn’t been a problem after more than a year on XMPP.
When you say traffickers joined your rooms to post spam, how did they find you? Is it like email where they can just try every possible email address at a particular domain or was your room posted publicly on your website or something and that’s how they found you?
The rooms we had issues with were public rooms that were discoverable via Matrix, with a couple of links on the web to direct people to them. The links to the rooms still exist in the same places, but ever since converting them to XMPP links rather than Matrix ones the traffickers have disappeared. I couldn’t tell you if that’s because XMPP is less popular with that crowd or if the tools they’re using to discover and spam them don’t work on XMPP. Either way it was a welcome change.
I don’t know what people use discord for, honestly. I just call up my friends on signal for the regularly scheduled gaming session and play. All I need is audio.
I don’t understand what people need video or screen sharing for while gaming. Are they playing a game watching each other’s facial reactions or something? And others talk about screen sharing… Are you guys gaming while watching the other person’s screen? I’m puzzled.
Signal can audio and video calls with screen sharing 🤷
Matrix I only use for opensource projects or as a replacement or client for IRC (IRC sucks ass). There was also a time fosdem streamed everything on matrix. It was glorious. I wish more conferences (and fosdem itself) had chatrooms for every talk, rooms for different topics, and a general chat room for everybody. We don’t have to fly and waste fuel to participate in conferences. Not everybody has deep enough pockets to pay 2k for a flight to Sydney and a further 1k for food and lodging there. Or worse, a trip to the US to get fondled by US border patrol and sent to Guantanamo bay for having said “Trump is a dunce”.
Not a huge user of screensharing, but it does come up, and I’d probably miss it if I lost it. Here’s a few recent examples:
- Playing a 1v1 PVP game, such as Elden Ring or Armoured Core, taking turns with 3 players, it’s nice to be able to share POVs so that the waiting player can watch.
- Setting up for a TTRPG, it was nice to share the online character builder to more easily ask for advice on something like “which move should I take?”.
- Playing Valheim, we all died except 1, and he shared his screen so we could guide him to our bodies with the materials to build a portal for us to get back easily.
I’m certainly not sharing my screen all the time, but it comes up fairly often that something happens that you want to show the group when they can’t just look at it with you in-game. It all depends on what kinds of games you’re playing and how large a group you’re playing with.
XMPP, hands down.
Not only for me, but for other people. XMPP is leaner, more robust, easier to administer and overall not a nu-protocol, so it’s easier on the staff of the instance operating as well, leaving them more of their allotted time to tend to the community. And with client utilities like Gakim, Conversations and Movim, focusing on the service proper is even easier.
Fluxer is a better Discord alternative than Matrix and XMPP.
That said, XMPP is more private. Matrix is worse than everything else.
fluxer can be a better alternative, but right now is isn’t
i can barely use it due to server issues and selfhosting is not an option at the moment
not trying to dismiss fluxer, just making it clear to anyone trying to use it in its current state
The XMPP clients I’ve seen look unusable for large scale messaging, so between the two Matrix
Edit: Actually I need to look into Movin
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