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?
I don’t think XMPP is simpler than Matrix. With my insufficient knowledge; XMPP servers and clients have different standards. Some supports audio/video calls, some requires encryption while other maybe not etc.
Matrix has a standard set of features and all software around it built for those features. TBH I find Matrix pretty instable lately tho.
I was under the impression that there is only one Matrix server implementation. Standards are not really required in that situation.
There’s way more and I already tried three implementations while trying to get a set of features I need. It’s a wild west out there and the resource usage is way higher than e.g. hosting Prosody. Seemingly it has to do with chatrooms being a full mesh, but my single user server consumes about 700mb RSS and 2.4 gb VSZ which is kinda high.
And the same is true about Matrix lol
Yes, you can shoot me from there and you’re right but I don’t see much difference between Matrix clients. The experience is pretty common between them. Synapse is de facto standard.