I'd like to second Snikket - it's designed for this use case and is very simple to set up.
If you'd rather not use Snikket, check out these recommendations for clients and servers.
Hope it works for you! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
I'm very sympathetic to this blog post, as it nicely describes why I use XMPP.
But, on a related note, I have noticed an interesting pattern where people talk past each other a little, especially when conflating user freedom and security.
If I'm to generalise, I feel the outlook of XMPP users tends to be more systemic and long-term. We've seen how chat networks come and go, we've seen the dangers of companies promising to serve your interests whilst also being a chokepoint of centralisation. So we tend to de-emphasize papercuts or current issues in clients and the protocol, on the basis that we have the power to fix them if we want to.
I feel that's shown in this blog post - all the points come back to the benefits of user freedom: no one entity controls you, the protocol serves you, you can choose your own clients, and if you don't like it, you can always switch / write your own!
What I've seen is that the people who gravitate towards Signal tend to be more concerned with the here and now - e.g. "how do I get my friend off telegram onto a secure / private service". I feel in many cases that making arguments about federation and the structure of the network won't sway them, as they'll always be able to point to some area where the clients are deficient in the here and now (depending on their interests - papercuts in the clients, different versions of OMEMO being used across the network etc).
I don't really have a solution to this, but I think all we can do is continue to make the clients and servers as good as they can possibly be. I always encourage anyone I manage to migrate to XMPP to send me any annoyances they find in the apps, so that they can eventually be fixed. We need to be ready for when Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp etc. abuse their power, because (as we've seen from the fediverse) that's the only time that "regular people" will care for the arguments that we're making about federation and user freedom.
Different strokes for different folks! I've been fortunate enough that many of my family and friends have been happy enough to follow me.
But I don't disagree with you, Signal has a much more recognisable brand and better user experience. These are things that we need to improve if we're going to get anywhere near the level of adoption Signal has.
How I Got a Truly Anonymous XMPP Account:
Sorry, it's a cheap joke, but it still baffles me that Signal requires a phone number, so I felt I had to post it :)
Of course, this is not XMPP-specific either, just my protocol of choice, there are many other open alternatives that also offer such functionality.
I originally suggested Monal to my friend (who is quite into iOS and really appreciates a well designed application) and she found the same, but then she tried Siskin, and was happy enough to use it to this day.
Just for reference, here are my favourites on each platform.
Each support modern XMPP extensions, interoperate very nicely with each other, and (at least in my opinion) look good!
As a note of caution, I used Oracle's free tier to run a personal Matrix server, and it got deleted without any advance warning after a few months. I migrated to another provider and haven't had any issues for 2+ years now.
I've had good fortune converting some family and friends to use XMPP.
People always mention fragmentation, and while there is some truth to it, it can be massively minimised by choosing blessed clients and servers for them to use.
In my case, I run my own server, and thoroughly test the clients (especially the onboarding flow) that I expect them to use, so that any question they have, I can help them out with quickly. Since we're all on identically configured servers, it minimises one whole class of incompatibilities.
There is still unfortunately a bit of a usability gap compared to Signal - particularly on the iOS clients. But they have come a long way and are consistently improving.
Gotcha. Now I understand a bit more about the way input is locked down, it looks like I would need OpenSD to allow for more sophisticated controller input without using Steam.
Thanks for the reply, this is really helpful!
If you don’t, the Steam Deck will essentially behave as a Xbox 360 controller.
I see, this makes sense and I guess the "Xbox 360" experience will depend on whether the games themselves have native support for controllers or a very flexible input scheme.
the touchpads will not behave correctly
This is interesting, do you know what would be the difference between using the touchpads on other distros vs through SteamOS? Are they not just seen as a regular mouse input device by both OSs?
Thank you for writing up such a detailed response!
I run Debian on my laptop and tend to install FOSS games through the regular package manager. However, I don't spend as much time playing these games as I would like, so when I was looking into the Steam Deck I was hoping that it would let me have a very similar setup, but as a portable device.
I see through your reply that, if I want automagic compatibility out of the box, this is crowdsourced and implemented through some intermediate Steam layer. I was hoping there might be some way to bypass Steam and treat the trackpads as regular mouse input, and map the other buttons as if they are keyboard buttons or generic controller inputs, without having to go through Steam.
I guess this would mean the FOSS games I'm interested in playing would need controller support natively implemented, which I'm not too sure on for the games I'm interested in. Probably time to dust off an Xbox 360 controller and see how they perform!
It's not perfect yet, but it's much, much better than the old days.
OMEMO is supported by every major client, and they interoperate successfully. Unfortunately, most clients are stuck with an older version of the OMEMO spec. It's not ideal, but it doesn't cause any practical issue, unless you use Kaidan or UWPX, which only support the latest version.
All popular clients and servers support retrieving chat history now too.
In practice, I've been using it for several months to chat with friends and family, and haven't had any issues.