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?

  • jlsalvador@lemmy.ml
    62·
    2 years ago

    I think that the reason is the same for “why is XMPP mentioned more than IRC?”. IRC has more clients, it’s less resources hungry and simpler than XMPP.

    I think that the reason is because it is old-fashione, and it’s clients feel outdated and (native) “lacking features” compared to more popular clients like Discord, WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram or Signal. 🤷‍♂️

    I can imagine my cousins using any of the clients I mentioned before, but not IRC, XMPP, or any protocol from my era. Life and traditions, isn’t it?

    • Cyclohexane@lemmy.mlOP
      3·
      2 years ago

      From a quick look into XMPP’s clients for android, they seem nice and some have modern features too.

      Is there any technical limitation that would prevent xmpp client from having a WhatsApp-like UI?? WhatsApp started out with XMPP and probably still uses a variant of it. If anything, I’d imagine its harder with matrix given the complexity of the protocol.

    • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
      31·
      2 years ago

      But your cousin almost certainly already uses XMPP, in the form of Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, gChat, Zoom, or something like that…

    • Cyclohexane@lemmy.mlOP
      3·
      2 years ago

      Makes sense, but to me newness alone is not a benefit. In fact, it is a bit of a disadvantage. XMPP has more clients for example, and they are more mature.

      • Dagamant@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 years ago

        Im 100% with you. If I were going to set one up it would probably be XMPP. However I havent dug into the features of each to do a proper analysis on which would suit my needs because I have no need for a chat service right now.

  • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Matrix is newer, afaik it is used by more foss projects for communication than xmpp, and it has a more widely accepted standards base for things compared to xmpp, where I have often heard that it has multiple different implementations for things like voice calling and encryption which are incompatible with each other. Don’t take my word on it, but I hope that at least by reading this those interested can search for the issues and whether they are valid.

    But then, what do you mean by xmpp being easier to host? I’m not familiar with XMPP hosting.
    Matrix requires a home server, and a database server. If you want voice calls it also needs webrtc voice infra.