this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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I am searching for a selfhosted and secure (end to end encryption) chat platform for my family (5-20 users), possibly one i can host on a raspi.

Is matrix a good choice, or should i try something else?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

three main ones I've seen in this comment section are

• XMPP

• Matrix

• SimpleX

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

So all of these encrypt the conversations so not even the server admin can access them?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (3 children)

XMPP only does it with certain client extensions. And Matrix only does it when the rooms are set up this way. SimpleX does what you want, but is kind of unintuitive for the average user.
I say go with Signal, it does what you want and is idiot-proof.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It is literally one setting in Matrix to force all rooms to only do encrypted messages.

Signal is pretty unintuitive when it comes to multiple devices per user, device transfers after a device has been lost,etc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Signal is perfectly good under normal usage. Everything is unintuitive when it comes to extremes like losing your device.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Signal is annoying to use if you don't have a smartphone you can trust, since they do not allow registration from desktop. So either an Android VM or Signal-cli. But maybe it was just a one-off bug that the desktop client didn't bind to signal-cli for me. Still, the fact that you need an unofficial command-line application just to register makes it not exactly user-friendly.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I imagine that most people's families will find Singal easier than using a CLI program anyway. It's rare to find an entire family without typical cellphones.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yea, but a typical cellphone is not as easy to make private as a typical laptop or desktop. Lineage has some tradeoffs and not accessible on all devices, and Graphene needs even more specific, quite expensive hardware!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Good luck getting grandma to install and use Graphene or Lineage on their 3 year old underpowered Samsung device that already works the way they know.

I think you're making problems where there aren't any. A device PIN or fingerprint along with Signal is probably way more secure than any family chat needs to be.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I meant telemetry to Google and/or manufacturer. With grandma, I can at least install Linux on her laptop and say to message me there (that's pretty much what I did with mom).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Wouldn't say that. With most Matrix Clients, WhatsApp, etc. it's far easier. Especially from a perspective of a elderly,less tech adept user.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

To be fair, pretty much all major XMPP clients have adopted OMEMO encryption, so doesn't seem like much of an issue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

But it's not self hostable.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

no idea, I've just seen these in the comments