It is battle tested, standardized, widely used, have open source servers and apps, end-to-end encryption (OMEMO), self-hostable and are low on ressources and federated / decentralized.

I use it with family and friends. Conversations and blabber.im on android and Gajim on Linux. There’s also apps for windows and Apple.

Curious if anyone here use it and why, why not?

EDIT: Doh. In these Lemmy times I forgot federated. Added.

  • leetnewb@beehaw.org
    3·
    1 year ago

    I use it for OMEMO encrypted family messaging and image transfer (snikket). Very fast messaging, lightweight server, and the A/V works quite well. Biggest issue, imo, is the lack of a great iOS client - not a judgement on the developers, I think that’s just the reality of developing on iOS. But an iOS client that works as seamlessly as Conversations would go a long way to regaining lost traction.

    • Chobbes@beehaw.org
      3·
      1 year ago

      This is what I’ve been saying for years. Siskin is pretty good these days, but it’s still not perfect (push notifications with OMEMO have no content). It’s really hard to recommend XMPP to people when the iOS experience is kind of bad (with omemo, anyway).

      • amanneedsamaid@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I cannot recommend Siskin, as those in my life that have tried it have always experienced random issues. I find Monal to be a better experience in every way, except for the lack of calling support with Conversations.

        • Chobbes@beehaw.org
          2·
          1 year ago

          Monal is okay. It chews up battery and recently did some heinous crimes with group chat notifications so I’ve switched to Siskin. Either way… Neither app is perfect. Xmpp is decent on iOS now, but still a little lacking.

  • agrammatic@feddit.de
    2·
    1 year ago

    What I have to give to XMPP is that it’s one of the easiest federated services to self-host. Running Prosody is super simple.

    • Chobbes@beehaw.org
      4·
      1 year ago

      Prosody is amazing and I’m still astounded by how easy it is to get XMPP up and running. That’s great stuff!

        • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
          0·
          1 year ago

          My wife uses teams for work, it seems pretty nice, it has everything in place, like video meeting, meeting note, calendar, and everything seems very streamlined.

          Slack just don’t have anything. What is your complaint about teams, is it unstable or something?

          • pimeys@lemmy.nauk.io
            2·
            1 year ago

            Buggy, uses a ton of resources, super weird UI. I’ve said no in job interviews to companies who use Teams as their main communication platform. Slack is “fine”, but much better than Teams. At least it works, especially from Linux.

  • floofloof@lemmy.ca
    0·
    1 year ago

    My colleagues and I had set up a nice self-hosted XMPP server which everyone could use to chat in-house without any of the traffic leaving our network. We had it end-to-end encrypted and it was quick and easy. Then management (with the support of a few employees who like hype) switched us to Slack. It wasn’t private, it wasn’t end-to-end encrypted, all our confidential messages went out to the internet, the boss could technically read anything we wrote, and many people didn’t like the UI. Once management got frustrated with Slack they switched us to Microsoft Teams. After using that for a year, I miss Slack. Teams is a bloated buggy mess with a UI designed to confuse and no privacy, and it also has all the disadvantages of Slack.

    A few of us have secretly switched to Matrix and Element. It’s good. Don’t tell management.

    • kalipike@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      @floofloof I would love to move to Matrix/Element but don’t know a single person who uses it, so it doesn’t seem like it would much benefit me unfortunately. I do still have an account though.

      @privsecfoss

      • Scott@lem.free.as
        0·
        1 year ago

        Install some bridges. I’ve managed to remove all those third party chat apps from my devices and just use Matrix to chat to everyone whether they’re on Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, IRC, etc.

        • dwindling7373@feddit.it
          0·
          1 year ago

          Can hyou point me on some good material to learn about them? I’ve been reading about those for years but never crossed a guide…

    • Widget@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      the boss could technically read anything we wrote

      My old work actually ran into some issues because they couldn’t see DMs/private channels.

      Maybe this is a cloud vs. self-hosted thing? It’s been a few years since I’ve worked there though.

      • floofloof@lemmy.ca
        1·
        1 year ago

        In an average workplace that seems like a bit of a losing battle to fight since everyone can message each other on personal phones anyway. But I can see it if it’s a workplace that handles sensitive information and restricts the use of personal devices.

        My workplace went remote-only. So they don’t really stand a chance of preventing us messaging each other on our personal devices. I do try to keep the work machine separate though.

  • BrikoX@vlemmy.net
    0·
    1 year ago

    It’s great, problem is adoption with non tech people. You clearly had better luck with your friends and family than most. It’s hard enough to get them to use something as standard as Signal.

    • Chobbes@beehaw.org
      5·
      1 year ago

      I host my own XMPP server and I like it (super lightweight and easy to set up), but good god the people that work on XMPP stuff seem to not want it to take off at all. They all complain that everybody is using matrix for some mysterious reason and when you explain that you can’t in good conscience get your friends to switch to it because there aren’t really great iOS apps it’s just a hissy fit about how people should use android instead… which is just not very realistic. Really wish XMPP had a good cross platform client. The client situation is improving rapidly and OMEMO finally mostly works everywhere! But it’d be really nice if there was a consistent client between platforms.

      That all sounds really critical, but I really do like XMPP and I really hope it gets better and gains more traction again! We really need good federated chat again, ideally just associated with an email address or something… because the current chat ecosystem is a mess!

    • privsecfoss@feddit.dkOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Agree it’s easier to get techies on board. With normal people it is kind of a struggle competing and argumenting against the likes of WhatsApp, FB messenger and such. But I totally think it’s worth it because privacy.

  • zorrothefox2001@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    IIRC Google Talk using XMPP and most major messengers having GTalk integration, they pretty much accidentally federated several messenger apps

    • treadful@lemmy.zip
      1·
      1 year ago

      They took out XMPP years ago. I had a lot of hope for the future when they first federated. Even ran my own server and was able to talk to Google Talk users. Alas…

      • Chobbes@beehaw.org
        3·
        1 year ago

        I still cannot believe the Google I/O where they killed Talk and said “we’re consolidating all of the Google chat applications into hangouts. There will only be hangouts” and then the very next Google I/O they announced TWO new chat applications (allo and duo), whose purpose I never understood, and then every year since they’re like “everything is Google meet now… no, not that Google meet, the other Google meet” and I have absolutely no idea what’s going on and nothing makes me feel so old and out of touch like trying to follow Google’s chat ecosystem.

  • itchy_lizard@feddit.it
    0·
    1 year ago

    I like XMPP and OTR is nice, but we need double-ratchet for secure communications and sync with multiple devices.

    • leetnewb@beehaw.org
      2·
      1 year ago

      Omemo is double ratchet and my messages sync to multiple devices. New device can’t read old messages sent before exchanging keys with the other clients.

  • fouc@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    It’s trivial to self host. I’m running a server on a small VPS for the family. Best part is they don’t even know they are running XMPP, just installed Conversations and that was it.

    • Chobbes@beehaw.org
      2·
      1 year ago

      I switched to iOS from android a while ago, but conversations was an AMAZING app and I wish there was something even half as good on iOS. That said… isn’t it the case that conversations is a paid app on Google play, and only free on fdroid? It’s totally worth the $2 or whatever it was on Google play, but I feel like it’s a hard sell for normal people who are used to free chat apps? Did you have any problems with that, or has the situation changed since I last looked?

      • leetnewb@beehaw.org
        2·
        1 year ago

        There is also Cheogram (conversations fork), which is actively developed/tweaked by the jmp.chat folks - very nice. Also Snikket (conversations fork) that is themed and tweaked to use with a snikket server, but it happily works with other servers.

        Another interesting tidbit. Chromebooks integrate the Android runtime to run play store apps. Windows 11 is also kinda/sorta shipping an Android runtime, but not by default. You can also spin up an Android runtime on Linux. I tested the snikket android app on Windows 11 and ChromeOS - works perfectly. So, I suspect all conversations forks can run across Android, Windows, ChromeOS, and Linux platforms - pretty neat. Doesn’t solve the iOS gap and getting the runtimes going could use polish on Windows and Linux. And nothing against the other desktop apps in development, but the ability to essentially run the Android app against most major environments makes me want to contribute to that code base (if I had any ability to develop for android, that is).

        • Chobbes@beehaw.org
          2·
          1 year ago

          Ah yeah, another fun fact is that Snikket on iOS is a rebranding of Siskin. On iOS Siskin seems to be the best option right now with the one caveat that push notifications won’t contain the content of OMEMO messages (I think the plan is to design and implement an encrypted push XEP?). Conversations is probably the best xmpp application out there, so I’ve been tempted to run it on Linux via the Android runtime in the past. These days I’m pretty happy with Dino.

          I feel like we need something like converse.js on all platforms or something. Just something decent and consistent so you can recommend it to a friend on a different device and help them / understand their perspective, you know? I think converse.js has a desktop app via electron now, which seems like a start.

          • leetnewb@beehaw.org
            1·
            1 year ago

            The standalone converse app was problematic when I tried it last. Also, there was a summer of code attempt at bringing jingle a/v sessions to converse, but it was never completed and nobody seems to have picked it up.

            • Chobbes@beehaw.org
              2·
              1 year ago

              That’s a bit of a shame. I don’t personally find jingle that important, but it’d be great if it worked… Also OMEMO on converse is sort of in a weird state I think. AFAIK it still depends on a JS libsignal library that’s deprecated.

      • fouc@lemm.ee
        2·
        1 year ago

        Yes Conversations is still a paid app on Play Store. The F-Droid version also doesn’t support Google cloud notifications so some message notifications will go missing occasionally. For Android there’s also Quickly which is a Conversations fork and aTalk which works OK but reminds me of 90s Windows software. It’s still quite usable though. Honestly Conversations is totally worth the money if only for the amount of effort gone into modernising the platform which also a testament to its extensibility.

        • Chobbes@beehaw.org
          2·
          1 year ago

          Oh, I totally agree that conversations is worth the $4 or whatever. I just have a hard time convincing friends to switch over to a new chat application to talk to only me when it’s not even free for them, you know? And if it’s a less technical person getting them on fdroid is a tricky proposition too. I don’t begrudge conversations for charging, but I do think it would be easier to get people on XMPP otherwise.

    • poVoq@slrpnk.net
      1·
      1 year ago

      Matrix is more like IRC or Slack/Discord with a focus on group-chats, while XMPP is more like Signal, WhatsApp or Telegram. XMPP can also do group-chats, but the current clients don’t have as much of a focus on it. Otherwise they are pretty similar, but XMPP is overall a much more mature protocol and the software has less bugs and is more performant.

  • Sens@feddit.uk
    0·
    1 year ago

    I think it should be incorporated into Lemmy as a chat function. Also been thinking if I could develop it, I have experience with XMPP from an application my employer creates.

    • GraceGH@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      Do we have to give every forum a chat function? I don’t want anyone and everyone to be able to dial me up to talk about my internet post history

  • Matija Šuklje@toot.si
    0·
    1 year ago

    @privsecfoss I would absolutely love to get back to #XMPP as my main (ideally only) IM, but in time some things made it hard to do so:

    - it’s extensible and not all clients support all modernly needed extensions - the #Jabber XEP solves this (on paper/standard level)
    - loads of spam - again, tackled by Jabber XEP bundle and clients that fully implement it
    - and ultimately, 90% of my contacts there never pop up anymore - network effect problem