this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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I'm looking into a few different chat servers, probably just for family on my tailnet.

I like the idea that simplex allows video chat. My server is a repurposed optiplex 3060so I think it should be able to handle it. Is anyone doing this? Do you think it's worth it?

Should I be considering other options like XMPP?

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[–] BrightCandle@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Every one always says XMPP and there were a lot of recommendations for ejabberd. I tried this recently and it was a total disaster, I do not have a working chat server. If I followed the docker instructions the server would just crash with no details of what went wrong. Where it should have been creating a default server config file it was instead creating a directory with the wrong permissions then promptly crashing. I tried following their documentation but after about 6 hours of messing about and adding more and more I still couldn't get a client to login to it. I have no idea how to make this work.

So whatever the solution ultimately is I can't recommend Ejabberd.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ejabberd is definitly for more advanced users, but you can usually get help over at joinjabber.org (which has a webclient that you can use without an xmpp account).

But yes, Snikket and Prosody is easier to set up.