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cross platform chat alternative to facebook messenger? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I am really struggling to replace facebook messenger / whatsapp for a few casual conversations. My friends and I are all wanting to move away. We are not heavy users of this but need it to work. I think the requirements are:

floss client for android, linux, windows
persistent history across devices
reasonable security
don't need to self host server
can send a message to offline user, they get it when they come online
not tied to or reliant on phone number / cell service
ETA: end user documentation explaining how to set up and common troubleshooting

tried:

matrix: the thing with having to keep track of room keys and stuff is too complicated. every time someone uses a new device it is a ton of issues and we could never quite get it ironed out
signal: tied to phone number, no history across devices
xmpp: similar to matrix the key situation is confusing, also no cross device history
ETA: simpleX: a lot of people here are mentioning simpleX. It didn't come up in previous investigations so will give it a shot.
- ETA 2: It doesn't seem to have persistent history across devices. Clarification?

I actually didn't think this would be such a problem but it is breaking us. we don't need a lot of sophisticated features like voice, video, moderation, 1000s of participants, spam protection etc that seem to be of concern to the projects. just simple text chat.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well you can try https://snikket.org which packages a Prosody server with suitable clients and it all should just work (tm). They also offer a hosted version.

On https://joinjabber.org you can also find recommended clients and servers that should work without problems.

But to be honest, none of the issues you describe are actually real in my experience. Yes you read them everywhere from badly informed online pundits, but if you use a modern xmpp client with a modern xmpp server it all just works without issues and e2ee keys are automatically exchanged on first message without any problem.

There are some vastly outdated clients like Pidgin that do cause issues, but it is a bit unfair to blame that on xmpp, when Pidgin has not updated their xmpp implementation for more than 10 years 🙄

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do you have the impression that I have not actually had the problems I am describing? Like I just read online that other people had problems? Not the case. As I said after you assumed I "only tried Pidgin 🤦‍♂️" I have tried lots clients.

but it is a bit unfair to blame that on xmpp, when Pidgin has not updated their xmpp implementation for more than 10 years 🙄

Who is blaming anything on pidgin? you are the one who brought up pidgin.

The join jabber link is very nice and I didn't find it before. But I actually tried the 2 linux clients they recommend: dino and gajim. And between us, going from memory I think we have tried all but 1 of the recommended servers.

The impression I got from digging around in repos (which I don't really want to be doing just to get a messaging app tbh) is that the problems we had are legit open issues in some cases. But it is hard to diagnose because the client developers don't have knowledge/control of the end user's local environment or the server set up. And likewise the server admins don't know the internals of every single client. End users with problems are challenged to collect all the required information. Here is an example from gagim: Chat History Sync Issue (#11380)

I do not think it is fair to characterize that user as a "badly informed online pundit". They have a problem and it is basically too complicated to resolve with the available resources. There is probably some unknown contributing factor.

Snikket:

Help! I just want to chat!

Don’t worry! If there are no Snikket services that would give you an invite and if you are unable to run your own, Snikket may not currently be the right app for you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

https://snikket.org/hosting/

They can host it for you.

As for Gajim, I have been using it for years and never had history sync issues. Maybe you expect to be able to sync old e2ee messages on new devices? That is impossible to do with OMEMO and actually an intended security feature.