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?

  • @onlinepersonaEnglish
    9•28 days ago

    Matrix clients are simple, easy, and nice to look at. The matrix server might need more resources, but it comes with everything out of the box. There’s no need to fiddle with extensions and their weird naming, and hope that the other server/client also supports the extension. Also, are there bridges to other protocols?

    I remember trying to get encryption working on Pidgin and it was all around a bad experience.

    XMPP might be as powerful or more powerful than matrix, but nothing about it screams modern. It’s like IRC for Gen X’ers.

    Anti Commercial-AI license

    • poVoqEnglish
      9•28 days ago

      You are basing your experience on Pidgin, which is the worst possible choice for an XMPP client that hasn’t been updated in over a decade. Other XMPP clients are relatively modern looking and easy to use, including encryption (probably easier than Matrix for most users).

      • @onlinepersonaEnglish
        0•28 days ago

        I looked at Dino and another one mentioned here and they look dated. Windows 95 feel with better anti-aliasing, rounder corners, but same colors? Gtk 2 or something?

        Pidgin was my messenger of choice to communicate with people on facebook, gmail, and a few other protocols back then.

        But yeah, my experience with XMPP wasn’t good and if they don’t have bridges, there isn’t much of a reason for me to switch right now. It doesn’t seem to provide any advantages over Matrix.

        Anti Commercial-AI license

        • poVoqEnglish
          6•28 days ago

          Dino has an intentionally simplistic design, but it doesn’t look “dated” at all. Gajim or Movim both look pretty modern and similar to Discord etc. these days.

          And XMPP has bridges to pretty much all major commercial networks, it just doesn’t have a major centralized provider of them that in exchange siphons up all your personal data like Element & Beeper does. But you can easily self-host the available bridges for XMPP.

          • @onlinepersonaEnglish
            3•28 days ago

            Dino has an intentionally simplistic design, but it doesn’t look “dated” at all.

            That’s highly subjective, but I’ve shown some Gtk3 apps to people at work and the most expressive first reaction I got was “ew”. Dino and others getting that exact reaction wouldn’t be surprising.

            it just doesn’t have a major centralized provider of them that in exchange siphons up all your personal data like Element & Beeper does. But you can easily self-host the available bridges for XMPP

            And this is another reason why it isn’t prominent. “Grandma, all you need to do is host an XMPP server. It’s incredibly easy”.

            Anti Commercial-AI license

            • poVoqEnglish
              4•28 days ago

              You can easily do it for your Grandma. But your argument can be just as easily applied to Matrix vs. WhatsApp etc. If you use the centralized services of Matrix.org or Beeper then Matrix is just a very poor version of Discord.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•28 days ago

          I looked at Dino and another one mentioned here and they look dated. Windows 95 feel with better anti-aliasing, rounder corners, but same colors? Gtk 2 or something?

          Looks like a standard GTK4 app to me. Whether or not that is to someone’s tastes is obviously subjective, but it uses the same design language as every other GTK app under the sun.

          GTK apps always look out of place on Windows though. Looks far more sensible in its native environment (i.e. *nix running GNOME).