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You can also get pre-built docker image for it (which includes the administration module 'Anope' if you plan on doing a bigger server thing): https://github.com/dockerimages/docker-unrealircd
Multiple options there, I have used all of them, hosted only two of them. If you already host a Nextcloud instance (like many of us do) the least complicated option is probably Nextcloud Talk. You just install it as an app using the Nextcloud GUI, install the mobile app and you're good to go. There is no desktop client, sadly, so on the desktop you're always going to rely on the browser. Next up is rocket.chat. It's also an amazing messenger, feels a lot like slack and other team messengers feature-wise. There's a mobile app and I believe also a desktop client, but don't quote me on that. And then there's matrix. Oh boy. Matrix is not only a self-hosted messenger like the other two (yeah, I know about Nextcloud federation, but that's not nearly as powerful), it's a decentralised messenger standard. You can host your own server (called "home server" within the matrix world) and just communicate with other people on your server, or you can use "federation". This allows you to chat with any matrix user on any server that also uses federation. This works a bit like E-Mail, so your handle would look like @john.doe:example.com, example.com being the domain name of the home server. There's chat rooms, audio and video call Support, bridging to other messengers and much more, it's really quite interesting. I host a mid-sized matrix server using the reference implementation, Matrix Synapse. It's quite easy to set up using something like the Matrix Docker Ansible playbook. There's a lot of options for different clients, although I prefer the reference client Element. There's also other server implementations to choose from, that are more lightweight than synapse, but synapse does a great job of handling many users at once. Obviously there's a lot more open source self hosted messengers out there, but that's it for my little essay on self hosted messengers.
