Since we're all using Lemmy, an open source, decentralized, self hostable platform, wouldn't suggesting Matrix make much more sense?
I host a Matrix and Lemmy server. Even if Signal is completely trustworthy now, will it always be? It isn't my server and it's a single point of attack for anybody (including governments) to insert (or demand) a backdoor.
Interesting to hear people have the opposite experience as me. I have a home theater and love dynamic audio (loud when supposed to be loud, quiet when supposed to be quiet) but have noticed more and more that movies seem to be mixed for iPads and sound dead. Disney/Pixar is a great example of home theater enthusiasts finding their movies just aren't acoustically exciting anymore.
The only time I hate dynamic audio is when I'm trying to fall asleep
I was a 10 year lurker on reddit. Now I have my own Lemmy instance
Your mom's so fat I can't even ultrahand her
--totk
I love Nextcloud and host a server for personal and a server for work. I always update personal server first to test, upgrading to 27 now, we'll see how it goes.
I do wish the Nextcloud team would stop re-inventing the wheel a bit and utilize other open source projects. Why create their own chat platform and not just make it with Matrix? Why create their own video conference platform and not just use Jitsi?
I'll have to check that out
Work was easy enough - this is our messaging platform, use it, haha. For family and friends I would just take their phone and set everything up for them, join the rooms, set their avatar, everything. Minimize the work they need to do. It helps that none of my friends use Discord, maybe they do for games or something but they don't use it socially to communicate with friends. So even though Element has its fair share of bugs, it is still much better than MMS between iphone and android users, so my friends and family do see the advantage there.
Decrypto!
Discord came around after I had already gone FOSS as much as possible, so I've never actually used it. I host two Matrix (Synapse) servers, one for friends and family and one for work. I don't use it for large public chats, just friends or work, so my largest rooms are 10ish people each. The server side of things has never given me a problem, I easily run it on a 1 vCPU VM with 3 GBs of memory (I'm sure I could give it less if I needed to).
On the client side, Element works well enough, but I do wish it felt a bit further along after all of these years. Calls work reliably if one end is a computer (so computer to computer or computer to phone), but phone to phone calls are a complete roll of the dice if they will work properly. Notifications are a complete mess. I have Element open on my desktop right now with zero notifications, if I turn on my laptop and open Element (same exact account) it will show a handful of rooms with notifications until I go mark those as all read. The worst is when you get a call that isn't actually a call but a stuck notification from somebody that called you days ago.
I mean I do love it, there is no alternative for me. I simply don't even think about Discord or other proprietary apps as even a choice. I hope open source, decentralized software keeps gaining momentum and the rough edges are touched up a bit.
Apache.
I started my self hosted journey over a decade ago and from what I remember most of the guides were for apache so that's what I learned. Over the years Ive added so much that to re-do everything would take down my stuff while I figure it out and I just haven't found it worth it.
Although it's harder to keep it up these days, even setting up my Lemmy instance was a pain because nobody has apache guides anymore so you have to figure it out yourself
Chain fast food: Portillos hands down. Non chain: your closest hot dog or beef joint
I moved away from the Midwest a few years ago and miss the food dearly
It may not be perfect yet, but ill take the superior design approach (decentralized and self hostable) any day. The details can be improved over time. Matrix can improve its metadata handling, signal will never be decentralized and self hostable.
On top of that, if you get your friends and family on your instance like I have, the metadata isnt even a problem since everything is contained on my server anyway.