Firstly: Yes, I like Synapse / Cinny / Element too...don't hate me...but needs must when the devil drives...
For reasons that are too complex to get into (TL;DR: hodge podge of equipment from the dawn of time, from intransigent family members, complexity over HTTP vs HTTPS...they usual nonsense when you volunteer to become the family sysadmin) I've been looking at different methods for a persistent, family chat experience that I can "self host".
Does anyone know much about Jami?
From what I can see, it has the following worthwhile features:
- FOSS/GPL
- Android, Windows, Linux, macOS and iOS.
- Text messaging ,group chats, video calls
- File sharing, E2EE etc etc
- It apparently works over a LAN with no Internet connection at all, which is particularly interesting to me.
- Federation not required.
- CA not required
- Transparent handoff with Tailscale
From what I can see, there's a headless jami-daemon for Linux. Jami's own docs specifically suggest putting an existing account on an always-online server to facilitate message exchange, with multiple servers possible for redundancy.
So...that's...good.
OTOH, there isn't a Synapse-equivalent central Jami server holding everyone's accounts and rooms. Accounts and conversations are distributed across the participating devices, though as I said above, it looks like Jami does support an always-online daemon/device to improve message availability.
I dunno what to make of it. It seems...too good to be true.
Has anyone use it? Particularly, is the always-online jami-daemon actually dependable for store-and-forward behavior in practice?
https://github.com/savoirfairelinux
EDIT: This was an interesting experiment, but Jami is far too unreliable even without UnifiedPush / DHT (which I think is the main issue). I presented the work done so far and the consensus is to look at using IRC (as most of the users are familiar with that) and having Janus as the video chat / WebRTC server. It seems to work on all of their devices and doesn't have any of the cute issues we encountered with Synapse / Matrix
TL;DR the fam has settled on -
- Ergo as IRC server: https://ergo.chat/
- The Lounge as PWA IRC client: https://thelounge.chat/
- Janus for video calls: https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/index.html
- I will host all this on the Pi at my place and they can tailscale in.
I'm tied, boss. Never volunteer.
I have tried it before, it's neat, but notifications are not reliable since it is peer to peer (both devices need to be online for a connection), a bit like Briar if you've used that before. I don't think it uses the Tor network, so it might be faster than Briar (but also less anonymous?)
I don't have experience with the jami daemon though, so can't comment if that solves the peer to peer issue.
I personally like Matrix the best, since you have federation, options for encrypted chats, self-host able with Continuwuity (or Synapse), lots of alternative clients for nearly every OS (even mobile Linux, you have Fractal! FluffyChat also works but it's definitely oriented towards Android devices)
It sounds good but in practice it doesn't work out; laptops sleep, people put their phones on airplane at night, whatever happens in life. The "best" solutions use some sort of cache-and-forward relay (thinking like DeltaChat relays, or I hear SimpleX is adding them) but I think most end up looking at Snikket (xmpp) or Matrix for the group management etc. on a central server. The Disroot group uses "Movim" which is XMPP highly customized to a social experience.
I use DeltaChat with friends and there's a lot of things you can't do because it's essentially P2P with caching relays - like Jami, all control and data is stored on the device(s). If all you're looking for is a Signal replacement it's great (and why we use it), but if you want good group social controls you gotta go the central server route.
I think Jami here could do with caching relays like Delta has, could move this project to the next level.
I think they have that now, thus my interest
https://docs.jami.net/en_US/user/jami-for-servers.html
I like matrix too but am dealing with weird networking issues, across ancient devices. Issues around MatrixRTC, old android devices, using HTTP vs HTTPS and the like are making me not want to live on this world any more.
The quintessential Matrix experience
Try Matrix, they said. It will be fun, they said.
...
They.
Lied.
Don't know man, Matrix has been pretty much set and forget for me since 2017 or 2018.
Well, there's also IRC and XMPP. Could those work better for older devices? ~~Dunno, but neither are encrypted, so don't use them for anything sensitive.~~ Signal is good if you want security, they've been audited a lot, but they are based in the U.S. which isn't great.
I've also heard of Stoat (formerly Revolt) and Fluxer, both are relatively new, but I would prefer Matrix over both since it's more easily self-hostable (+ all those different clients to choose from!)
edit: I really didn't know, but looks like XMPP does support encryption! (and it's enabled by default on most clients!)
Just a little postscript for you, sbird
TL;DR the fam has settled on -
So, it looks like ye ancient IRC has saved the day.
Thanks for the suggestion; I never would have thought of it.
PS: I’m tied, boss. Never volunteer.
You know, I had to do a double take when you mentioned IRC, but it's actually come a long way since I used it last.
https://github.com/ergochat/ergo
https://thelounge.chat/
And unlike Jami, it really IS self hosted.
Good idea; thanks for that. I realise IRC doesn't have native video / audio calling but that's probably a smaller problem to solve / bolt onto that trying to juggle Matrix across multiple unruly devices
EDIT: ... IRC has video and voice calls now?
https://github.com/AndroidIRCx/AndroidIRCx
Wat
IRC is great. The challenge is picking a client for the family, and getting them set up. It's not friction free.
IRC supports TLS encryption. Many large networks don't actually have it enabled or use self-signed certs because they still think it's the 1990's, but if you make your own server you can use TLS just fine.
So I'm doubly wrong! That's kind of neat
Not only does XMPP support encryption, it does the same double ratchet encryption scheme which signal uses.
I run XMPP - just wanted to say that all major XMPP clients (the ones I'm thinking of are Conversations, Monal, Dino and Gajim, among others) encrypt-by-default, you have to actively go out of your way to disable it per contact.
That's actually pretty cool, I'll be making an XMPP account then. Adding to my collection of chat apps!
Oh whoops, I didn't know that! That's kind of neat, didn't know had encryption. I will amend my comment