Just to start off, know that I have zero experience with this. I’m only looking into doing this because I’m absolutely sick and tired of centralised services (in this case Discord) turning to shit, and want to start a Discord-like/alternative federation between my friends.
Prosody seems to be the easiest to set up, and has all the available capabilities for a server that allows Discord-like functionality (text, group voicecall, streaming). Movim is the client that makes use of all that.
But I don’t have a clue how to set up a Prosody server with Podman. I’ve never done this before. I started by downloading the Prosody image through Podman, then tried running it, which prompted the creation of a container. Kept everything at the defaults and tried running it, but it didn’t work.
What do I do from here?
Just a PSA. For voip to work you’ll need something like Coturn (TURN signaling server) which needs a gaping hole in your firewall. We ended up using mumble for ingame voice and jitsi meet if we need the other stuff (screen share, videos, whiteboard, etc)
Just a heads up, I feel like the people here who say things like “snikket is easy” are knowledgeable enough to forget what being a beginner is like.
I’ve been able to get both a Synapse server and a Continuwuity server up and working before I’ve been able to get anything XMPP working, including snikket. For being the older protocol, XMPP stuff just seems to be harder to find help/tutorials for, at least in my experience so far.
@iamthetot @Tattorack just why not trust conversations server or any other public server with encryption
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters IP Internet Protocol VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (‘Jabber’) for open instant messaging
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.
[Thread #109 for this comm, first seen 22nd Feb 2026, 12:41] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
That post title reads like nerdy mad libs
Yeah, I know. I wanted to pack as much info into the title as I can, and it turned out like technobabble. ^^;
This is maybe a bad idea: if you want reliable services, you need a hosting with some experience and reliability. You also want things to run on a real server, not your desktop. Servers are expected to be online 24x7, not only when you are awake. Also, AFAIK, bazzite is meant to be a desktop distro, not a server distro.
If you just want to enter the XMPP ecosystem, the answer is not necessarily self hosting: you could opt for one of many open sign up servers (for example, conversations.im).
You also dont need to self host movim, just pick any instance you want from https://join.movim.eu/ .
The beauty of XMPP is this: you can use any server, and any client, and you can talk to anyone connected to the larger XMPP network, even if they made different server/client choices than you did.
On the other hand, if your primary motivation is to learn, disregard all of the above. You learn by trying things and making errors and reading documentation and trying again, and reliability is a remote possibility that might come true (or might not) at the very end of your journey.
The beauty of XMPP is this: you can use any server, and any client, and you can talk to anyone connected to the larger XMPP network, even if they made different server/client choices than you did.
That’s a very optimistic and naive view. XMPP consists of a shit ton of extensions, and different clients implement different subsets of these. So it’s very possible that two different clients fail to do an audio or video call, because the other decided to use a different extension than the other for not implement it at all.
Thats a very fair point. My mistake was, that when I say “talk to each other”, my brain implicitly says “talk via text over messages”. Even then omemo is not universally supported yet, I think, so, encrypted messages can also be hit or miss.
But in OP’s case, this still kind of works, in the sense of, it doesn’t matter which instance of movim they and their friends are on, they will still be able to intercommunicate, right?
It’s a bit of both:
My friends need a drop-in replacement for Discord (or as close as possible), sooner rather than later. My idea for self hosting is to defeat the need of someone hosting a 24/7 server; if we all host our own accounts on our own computers we’d essentially have a peer-to-peer Discord-like group.
The other reason is indeed to learn, because every centralised service has the same problem; it’s not a question if a service will turn bad, but when. It’s an inevitability, and it’s happening faster and more frequently. The only out-way I see is if me and at least some of my friends learn to self-host.
There are some misconceptions here, probably because your experience with the internet outside of these decentralised / federated services has taught you those.
1.) Servers are expected to be online 24x7. Clients can go offline and online as they please, but servers are always always always online. Otherwise very strange things start happening.
2.) Peer to peer stuff is generally speaking, somewhat brittle, because of the kinds of compromises it comes with.
3.) Signing up on an xmpp server managed by someone else is still not signing up to a centralised service. Its still just one node on the XMPP super network. Your friends can still sign up on some other server, and you can still talk to each other, with whatever clients you prefer.
There may still be a case to be made for installing movim on your own computers, but I’d say, go with the easy route and pick any movim instance from the link shared above.
Movim specifically works a bit better with ejabberd, who also provide easy to use containers.
Prosody is more of a Lego set to build your own server, so I don’t think they even provided official container images for a long time. There is https://snikket.org/ though which is an opinionated distribution of Prosody with easy to use containers. Sadly Snikket doesn’t play so well with Movim out of the box.
In general it is probably easier to start out with a rented VPS. You can move to your own server later on when you got the basics down. Since XMPP servers are quite lightweight they run fine on low end VPS that can be rented for as little as 1€/month.
I have considered looking into renting a VPS, but considering my friends group does A LOT of voice calling and streaming over Discord I dint think super lightweight is an option. Even so, not having to pay for a server is always better than having to pay any amount for one.
I’ll take a look at ejabberd. Didn’t know there were specific preferences for clients.
For now voice and video calls in xmpp only lightly touch the server and are mostly p2p. This comes with some scaling issues but for small groups of around 5 people it works fine.
Movim is a bit special, for other clients it doesn’t matter much.
someone else said snikket before me! agreed
Oh no, not another Lemony Snikket rabbit hole.
You can try Snikket.org, which is basically Prosody but easier. But you can’t selfhost “on each person’s own computers” as you said because you’d still need a publicly exposable IP addresses and high uptime. Maybe you could try registering on an XMPP or Matrix instance you like and migrate your community over there first
Question for others: is Prosody’s (and XMPP’s) group calls really good? I’m under the impression that Matrix (with Element Call) is currently better due to the SFU architecture, but I’d be happy to be proven otherwise. I’m interested to hear required specs, how large the calls can be, and how much strain it puts on the TURN server and clients especially when it comes to multiparty streaming
AFAIK the Movim people are working on SFU calls too, but not soon
Maybe. Looking like the best option right now.
Yes, Matrix is a bit ahead with SFU calls (after depending on Jitsi Meet for a long time, which uses xmpp under the hood). But for most usecases it doesn’t matter so much. On a modern internet connection a SFU basically only starts being useful in calls with ten or more participants. For corporate board meeting calls maybe, but your family call is also fine without.
Setting up an xmpp server is not a good entrypoint in the self-hosting space. It is quite hard to build. It is a complex system made of different components in order to achieve what you expect from it. I strongly recommend using existing servers. If you want to tinker, find something else (a samba share and a vpn on bare metal is a good starting point in order to learn).
Snikket makes it quite easy, but the extra complexity of hosting from home is probably better avoided for total beginners.
