I want to stop using WhatsApp because I fuckin hate it. Does anyone use XMPP regularly? It allows encryption so I was considering it.
The consideration is whether I will have to self host it or I can use some publicly hosted instances (like how there are open Matrix instances). Also whether it has support for desktop clients that run natively on Loonix without electron.
Please share your thoughts if you have experience. Feel free to suggest other alternatives too. I won’t mind that.
I don’t know much about XMPP but when I briefly looked at it there seemed to only be a focus on mobile platform and not much offering on desktop. Can I ask if you have considered Matrix?
XMPP is an open protocol, meaning that it can be integrated in any app you build around it, which also means that it can only be as good as the app turns out to be. The great strength of XMPP lies in its flexibility, so naturally there is a whole bunch of apps to choose from, also for desktop, like Adium or Pidgin
I am not opposed to matrix. But the support for encryption in non-electron client seems like it’s not there yet. It seems harder and more resource intensive to self host than xmpp. Plus it has been getting very friendly with corporations lately so it makes me unsure about it’s future. And it has way more features than I want.
If XMPP doesn’t fit the bill for me I am down to use a publicly hosted matrix instance.
For an e2ee capable matrix client that doesn’t use electron, look at nheko. I have recently switched, and it is fantastic. You will need element temporarily to bootstrap keys, but after that, nheko will be able to do everything for you!
Well, Nheko is behind Element in many aspects, and it seems to me it’ll ever be, Nheko is not a business backed project, as Element is, and Element is considered the “golden model”, even though it’s a just an electron app on the desktop, and not only that, new Matrix features seem 1st get into Elment due to that, and the community clients, not the business back apps, have to see how to catch up.
On the other side, depending on the kind of chats, you won’t be able to see the sort of markdown formatting supported on Matrix chat, rendered, so for that kind of stuff (quoting, adding code snapshots whether inline or paragraphs) you better use Element. I ended up using both, though I prefer Nheko by not being an Electron app. Also, I noticed with Element, no matter the history of encrypted chats, when you 1st login to an encrypted chat, syncing from another device of your same account, you get all previous messages in the chat. However when you 1st login with Nheko, it can’t decrypt previous messages, and you will only sync further ones. That is not by itself a bad thing, but if you were counting on syncing from your own devices the whole chat history, you’ll get surprised with Nheko. Nheko is still my default client though, given my aforementioned preference to avoid using Electron apps.
I wasn’t able to retrieve the keys the last time around. Will try it again.
Ya try nheko again, key exchange should be working.
I manually exported and imported the keys and it worked fine after that. So I don’t have to use element anymore.
Nice. I think I did do that once a while back too, so maybe key exchange isn’t working properly.
The key with Nheko probably is: the latest release is from April. AFAIK they are planning a new release after e2e is “finished”, but I guess final 10% is the toughest one…
In other words, one might need to use the nightly builds to get better experience.
That is a bit ironic, because XMPP has for the most of its 20 years existence been only on desktop, and one of the reasons Matrix was started was to offer better mobile support.
But I agree in so far as that in the last few years the focus has been on mobile support, and these days XMPP is definitely top notch on Android (and soonish also on iOS), while most desktop clients have not been maintained very well. But the upcoming 1.4 release of Gajim looks very promising with its basically Discord like new UI and for Windows UWXP is also very nice.