element-meta VS umurmur

https://github.com/element-hq/element-meta/issues/339#issuec... is another facet, too.

It's quite disappointing that there's huge ongoing work around reinventing clients from scratch where the basic functionality of not ringing all my devices while I'm using only one of them [1] is still not there (bug open for years), despite it being a pretty simple fix.

[1] https://github.com/vector-im/element-meta/issues/360

Basically element / matrix was supposed to be a replacement for Discord but it's missing a lot of the polish. I've been hosting an instance for a year and I haven't really seen any notable improvements. There's no GIF keyboard after almost 8 years, large rooms take forever to load history, you can't play videos directly inside of a link preview, read receipts don't always work, etc. Basically just open source jank. Overall though I really appreciate the fact that it's entirely self contained, open source and the federation part is nice.

Scalar (the integration manager) is not open source [1] (though there was some effort to reverse-engineer its protocol [2]); and some of their anti-abuse scripts aren't public [3]

[1] https://github.com/vector-im/element-meta/issues/260

[2] https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-dimension/blob/master/do...

[3] https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.org/issues/557

Since I didn't hear much here I added it to the GitHub ideas. https://github.com/vector-im/element-meta/discussions/984

>...its server side is still written on Qt, which requires hundreds of megabytes of additional libraries to build it up.

See:

https://github.com/umurmur/umurmur

I've tried to make this argument in the past and gained no traction. What I did instead was to create self hosted chat things as a fallback for the times when Discord or Slack have a green status page but their applications fail to operate. Even light-weight daemons like uMurmur [1] or devzat ssh-chat can be handy in a time of need if a quorum know to fall back to it. Self hosted tools are also handy when one wants to share links or text that should not be on 3rd party sites forever and for eternity

[1] - https://github.com/umurmur/umurmur/wiki/Configuration

[2] - https://github.com/quackduck/devzat

Adding a more private self hosted option, there is uMurmur [1] which is light-weight enough to run on a Linux router. One of the mobile apps that works with it is Mumla.

There is of course the full blown Murmur [2] install that works a little more like Discord in that people can create channels and there is a permission system.

[1] - https://github.com/umurmur/umurmur/wiki/Configuration

[2] - https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page

For the other layers one can front-end IRC with TheLounge [1][2] or Convos [3][4]. TheLounge only persists history in private mode meaning that users are created in that front-end and chat messages are in Redis. For small networks or groups of friends this is probably fine.

Notably missing is voice chat. I use the Mumble client [5] with the Murmur or uMurmur [6] server which is light-weight enough to run on ones home router. I use it on Alpine Linux, works great. It's not a shiny and attention grabbing as Discord but probably fine for everyone else. For people to create their own voice channels would require the full-blown Murmur server.

[1] - https://github.com/thelounge

[2] - https://thelounge.chat/

[3] - https://github.com/convos-chat/convos/

[4] - https://convos.chat/

[5] - https://www.mumble.info/

[6] - https://github.com/umurmur/umurmur/wiki/Configuration

I suppose people should decide for themselves if they take the word of a centralized service. Convenience is a factor after all.

For those that have small circles of friends they wish to chat with and minimize the number of ISP's their traffic traverses, I would suggest tinkering around with uMurmur [1] There are pre-built packages in several operating systems package managers. The configuration is dirt simple [2] and the daemon is very light weight, designed to run on home routers. Use certbot to generate LE certs or just use self-signed. One TCP and one UDP port must be forwarded to the daemon, default port being 64738. One can set a server-wide password to keep strangers off of it, or set passwords per-channel.

uMurmur is not E2EE but if it is running on your own router and you are talking with your friends that you know and trust then maybe that is less of an issue. The mobile client is Mumla. Just put in the IP or hostname of the uMurmur instance.

[1] - https://github.com/umurmur/umurmur

[2] - https://github.com/umurmur/umurmur/wiki/Configuration

I like https://umurmur.net/ since it can run totally headless at the cost of some of Murmur's features. Mainline Murmur (the Mumble server) requires QT5 and mDNSResponder and various DB drivers and even D-Bus if you look at it crossways

I believe quite a few people use umurmur for stuff like this. Note that it's encrypted and I don't believe that can be shut off, so don't run it over, say, HamWAN, but I don't imagine that was the plan anyway.