this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024

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Why is Matrix mentioned more often than XMPP in self hosted forums? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/selfhosted

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I'm looking into hosting one of these for the first time. From my limited research, XMPP seems to win in every way, which makes me think I must be missing something. Matrix is almost always mentioned as the de-facto standard, but I rarely saw arguments why it is better than XMPP?

Xmpp seems way easier to host, requiring less resources, has many more options for clients, and is simpler and thus easier to manage and reason about when something goes wrong.

So what's the deal?

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

Xmpp is old and has no traction. Matrix is new and there are many people believing in it. There is a lot of money put on matrix. A lot of people want matrix to succeed. Especially companies, agencies and governments love matrix. Jumping on a train that already moves forward is easier than trying to push a standing train.

With xmpp, or signal I've got all my messages on my device. Distributing the info to other devices is difficult. With matrix everything sits on the server and distributes the info to the clients. That's like my file cloud, or my photo cloud or my music server, or my document server. Everything is saved centrally on a server and all is independent of the consumer device. I can use multiple devices and everything sits on the server. That's great for me as a user, it's easy.

Xmpp is scattered which is great on one hand but matrix development is moving very fast. Xmpp can't compete with that.

What's the advantage of xmpp over signal for the end user?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

It is true that Matrix follows a fat server model, but multi-device usage works perfectly well in XMPP these days.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

I can use my published PGP keys with XMPP, for starters. And I can use OMEMO. Matrix supports neither afaik.

[+] just_another_person -26 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wut

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

If nothing else, there is space for a competitor to MS teams in the corporate space.

Everyone else is ending up on teams, but no one actually likes it.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Everyone ends up on MS Teams because they bundle it with Office365, so execs have the choice of "free" or another $12/mo/user for Slack. It immediately makes it a case of "justify how Slack is so much better we spend thousands on it when Microsoft gives us Teams for free". Those execs don't use chat software in the first place.

That's why the EU forced them to unbundle Teams.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

No, not always. I know of a very major firm that uses google suite for everything but chat and video calls. They use MS Teams because its just that much better than google's alternative. From the chats Ive had, the issue with Slack there is that someone high up in their IT stack hates it.

[–] lightnegative 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Teams is relative.

At a previous job (Microsoft shop but in the public sector so 10 years behind), the standard messenger when I started was Skype for Business.

In case you've never used Skype for Business, it's "Skype" in branding only and actually has nothing to do with the Skype software that Microsoft purchased and is more like MSN Messenger.

Compared to that, Teams is a huge step up.

Also, at a Microsoft shop, you have to use what Microsoft provides even though it's usually balls.

It's 90% of the reason I now refuse to work anywhere that's bought into the Microsoft ecosystem. It's just so... mediocre

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's not because you compare Teams to something worse that Teams isn't terrible.

[–] lightnegative 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well, as far as I'm concerned Skype for Business set the benchmark for terrible. Teams isn't even close to being that level of bad

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I agree, but we should always compare to what is better and strive for that. Otherwise we get the situation today where the argument to take a product over another is that it's less bad than the old one