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How "heavy" is self-hosting matrix really? (programming.dev)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hi. I'm kinda of a noob in the world of self-hosting and matrix, for that matter. But I was wondering how heavy is it to host a matrix server?

My understanding how matrix works is each participating server in the room stores the full history and then later some sort of merging happens or something like that.

How is that sustainable? Say in 5 years matrix becomes mainstream and 5 people join my server and each also join 3 different 10k+ people rooms with long histories. So now what I have to account for that or people have to be careful of joining larger rooms when they sign up in a smaller-ish server?

Or do I not understand how Matrix works? Thanks.

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[–] 17 points 7 months ago* (18 children)

This is a fundamental issue of the Matrix protocol, yes. For regular small scale use it doesn't matter so much, and the state history gets reset every time you do a room upgrade, which is another annoying "feature" of Matrix, but it eases the fundamental problem a bit.

But IMHO the Matrix protocol is a child of the Bitcoin hype era and is built on a similar data-structure that is inherently impossible to scale and the developers of Matrix should have realized that early on. Their bosses back then actually did, but they spun it off as a separate company and got some crypto-currency investments so the can was kicked down the road and here we are...

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (12 children)

    Is there a good alternative that you would recommend?

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  • [–] 24 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    XMPP obviously. Have a look at https://joinjabber.org/

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  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    Still staggering to me that XMPP isn't the default, since it was used in many chat apps in the late 90's.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    Does it do screen sharing, group calls, etc.?

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    I believe group calling is only a thing certain clients (e.g. Dino, Movim) support, although there is a initiative to implement it on protocol level as far as I am aware.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    So, Onomatopoeia there is wondering why xmpp isn't standard, and I'm getting the sense that it is targeted at oldskool usage.

    Discord is popular because it's easy to start using, it has collaboration features like group screensharing, and it doesn't assume an ubernerd is the target audience.

    Maybe we'll get a more unified, feature rich xmpp implementation, but until then, sounds like matrix/element is closer, despite its warts.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    Its not "targeted at old school", it's an open, extensible protocol.

    If devs focused on extending the protocol instead of building an app to handle things like this, it could do it, everywhere.

    There are currently over 100 extensions.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    Mucking about with dozens of extensions instead of users just installing an app seems pretty old skool, lol, brings me back to bbs life.

    A discord replacement needs to have notifications, respond to calls, as well as share multiple screens.

    It also needs to have enough upfront simplicity so that it garners adequate critical mass for network effects. This means a set and forget unified interface and standardized features.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Yeah you could consider it old school, or maybe just a product of another time were people didn't mind to use multiple software for different uses.

    I for one don't mind using Mumble for voice and XMPP for text chat or one to one calls for example.

    I don't have a computer or smartphone so I only can install one app and that's it. And I know I might be in the minority when it comes to that, at least compared to the general public. For gods sake it's already hard to get people to install a second messenger app, not even trying to get them off WhatsApp or other meta crap...

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    What client(s) do you use/prefer?

    Like many, I am looking for a Discord replacement and (possibly hot take) I largely like Discord's layout, UI, and chat flow. That is to say, I like threads, channels, categories, and "servers" (spaces, what-have-you) to partition my chat experience. There are a few Matrix clients that replicate this closely, but the XMPP ones I have seen so far at least were not very enjoyable user experiences for me.

    (Not for nothing, I also have been able to get a Synapse server running on my homelab, but have thus far not been able to successfully get an XMPP server running so that's not helping my experience either)

    Happy to check out your suggestions.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Any source for the coin stuff? Never read about it

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    You could even argue it with the data structures and the protocol itself: Modelling chat rooms as graphs ("directed acyclic graphs"), which need to be eventually consistent from beginning to end is plain madness for big and long-living public spaces. This blog post is a good collection of some of the major problems coming from that: Why not Matrix? - telegra.ph

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    I knew of some of these issues with the protocol, but this article definitely gives an impression that Matrix was built as a "cool protocol" first, with messaging applied on top as an afterthought.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Welp. This comment has completely killed all my enthusiasm for matrix 😅 I had no idea it was such a horrible mess under the hood...

    I'm trying to move some communities off Discord to something self hosted but I don't know enough about SMPP to know if it would do the job.

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