Ask HN: What FOSS self-hosted chat programs do you recommend? Text/voice/video
3 comments
Chat program: Rocket Chat
NextCloud is a cloud solution I found relatively easy to set up and host but I only really use it for file sharing
Video Chatting: Jitsi. I haven't set up my own instance, but it has worked well for me all the times that I have needed it.
All three come with web interfaces, so no app is needed but RC does have a desktop app.
NextCloud is a cloud solution I found relatively easy to set up and host but I only really use it for file sharing
Video Chatting: Jitsi. I haven't set up my own instance, but it has worked well for me all the times that I have needed it.
All three come with web interfaces, so no app is needed but RC does have a desktop app.
Thanks. As mentioned I found Nextcloud difficult to set up (though that's not a showstopper, since it's a one time thing and users don't have to deal with it). But its web UI was imho poor. It was way too easy to click the wrong thing and have the UI suddenly change. I remember deciding my mom would probably find it unusable. The Android app had some issues as well, but I don't remember what they were. IIRC one of them was some obstacle to getting push notifications from the server without some kind of Google Play enrollment.
I'll try setting up Jitsi, though I remember thinking the setup looked daunting. Nextcloud and maybe Jitsi were both fairly hungry for server resources when the server side should really be very simple. Just some simple TCP proxying for multimedia plus a ZNC-like scrollback buffer for text.
I'll try setting up Jitsi, though I remember thinking the setup looked daunting. Nextcloud and maybe Jitsi were both fairly hungry for server resources when the server side should really be very simple. Just some simple TCP proxying for multimedia plus a ZNC-like scrollback buffer for text.
I personally thought Nextcloud AIO was pretty easy to set up:
https://techhut.tv/nextcloud-all-in-one-server-setup-guide/
Haven't used the other tools mentioned (yet) but plan to.
Haven't used the other tools mentioned (yet) but plan to.
I'd be using this mostly to talk to family, including my mom who is quite elderly and is thrown off a lot by interface elements changing, fonts changing, etc. IRC is really better than any web chat app I know of, except it doesn't keep scrollback when the client is disconnected. It is important to be able to use text and video at the same time, since her hearing is poor so it's better to type text that she can read.
My mom uses a Debian laptop that I set up for her, so if there's a Linux desktop app that's better than the web interface, that's great. She doesn't use mobile phones at all. I could imagine mobile apps also being worthwhile though, for users other than my mom. My sister uses an iPhone so the availability of an iPhone app would be nice.
I've tried the hosted version of Jitsi Meet (meet.jit.si) and it was nice. I haven't tried self-hosting it yet. I'm happy to hear about experiences, and also about anything else interesting that is out there.
Thanks!