[worble]

Is there a recommended or "blessed" server and client combo for someone who just wants to migrate their friends off discord?

The main site https://xmpp.org/software/ lists lots of different options but I have no idea what core/advanced means and comparing all of these would take ages.

[cookiengineer]

The ironic part is that those software description files are meaningless. AstraChat claims Advanced in all categories, but it's a proprietary commercial software, so nobody ran any kind of test suite to verify this.

That software list, how it's done and how it's ranked is literally confirming my initial point of critique :D

Last time I tried out several chat clients, most of them were alpha software, had lots of bugs appearing in normal conversation flows, well, or were so broken that they broke compatibility in subminor version updates to their very same client apps.

I just wish there was some kind of ACID test suite for XMPP or something else to reproducibly validate spec compliance. Maybe a test server or similar as a reference implementation. This way client or server maintainers would have to run their programs against the official test server to increase their compliance stats.

[edhelas]

> I just wish there was some kind of ACID test suite for XMPP or something else to reproducibly validate spec compliance. Maybe a test server or similar as a reference implementation. This way client or server maintainers would have to run their programs against the official test server to increase their compliance stats.

This is exactly what the Compliance Suits are for, and the XMPP Software Fundation is taking care of telling all the clients what they misses directly on the official website, for example: https://xmpp.org/software/movim/

[MarsIronPI]

There is the XMPP Compliance Tester[0] by the author of Conversations. It does a good job at testing servers. On the client side I'm not aware of any kind of benchmark.

[0]: https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/caas

[cookiengineer]

My point is about why clients like AstraChat can be listed with "Advanced" in the overview, but then in the details page it has nothing. See https://xmpp.org/software/astrachat-xmpp-client/

This should not be allowed.

[edhelas]

Because the declaration file of the clients says that it is actually compatible with everything in this section.

You can't run scripts on all the XEPs declared, some of them are purely redaction or bound to specific UI/UX behaviors. This is based on trust that the developers actually implemented things as stated.

[saghm]

Not being able to automate something is not the same as not being able to verify at all. It sounds like the parent commenter is arguing that at least some of the clients listed are not worthy of this trust because (either intentionally or due to developer error) they don't actually hold up to scrutiny. Obviously they're just one person and their opinion might not be representative but it's hard to argue that if some random user is expected to have enough time to try out various clients and figure out which ones work or don't that the official people in charge of making the recommendations of clients should probably be able to find the time to as well even if it's just a volunteer that they, well, you know...trust.

[leetnewb]

Hasn't social media like HN, Reddit, fediverse, etc. become the real clearinghouse of information about those sorts of questions? I can see how it would be nice for xmpp.org to be an authoritative source of truth, but user response/consensus seems more relevant these days, at least to me.

[nicoco]

The targeted audience of this website is, for now, developers. Communicating is hard.

https://joinjabber.org/ is/was an attempt at something more user-focused. It is not linked to the XMPP Software Foundation. BTW, joining the XSF and participating in discussion around protocol evolution, communication strategy and these sort of things is free, and only requires asking for write permission on the XSF wiki to add an application page. Everything happens in the open (mailing lists, chat rooms). We value democratic processes.

[opan]

>Is there a recommended or "blessed" server and client

Not sure about servers, but for clients there's Gajim, Dino, and Conversations. Not much else is super relevant these days. Profanity exists but is significantly worse than irssi or weechat despite looking superficially similar. Kaidan is a KDE/Qt alternative to Gajim but I'm not sure if it's usable yet. It may be worth switching when it's fleshed out to escape the bugs and slowness of the GTK-based clients.

[MarsIronPI]

If you stick with mobile use, there is Snikket[0], which provides a branded server+mobile app ecosystem that should "just work". YMMV; I haven't tried it myself.

[0]: https://snikket.org

[aaravchen]

I have and it works great.

The developer is very active in updating and maintaining the software (both client and server), and it already supports most of the XEPs.

It's open source and fully supports self-hosted as first class, but if you want to support the developer he offers a cloud hosting paid offering as well. There's a crossover offer with JMP.chat too. If you pay $5 upfront for your first month of JMP.chat, you can get a free cloud hosted Snikket server for it to be setup on. As long as you maintain at least one number with JMP.chat, you keep the server maintained. If you don't, you get a chance to migrate your data. The Snikket cloud server gives you an XMPP server admin account, and you can setup as many accounts as you want. The caveat is that Snikket implementation is optimized for <1000s of user accounts per server.

[Zokii0]

Monocles chat is best one for Android, it is the most complete chatting app for todays standards, unlike Conversations it has swipe to reply, last seen, emoji reactions etc. The only issue is making account there, need to use other homeserver like @conversations.im if you don't want to pay for their @monocles.eu . For IOS the only option is Monal. For web I find conversejs better than mov.im as movim doesn't encrypt sent pictures in chat at all, and encryption of text messages is sometimes broken depending on how you set it up in settings of account and in chat, as it needs to be activated on both places, so conversejs is better, but less enjoyable UI than movim

[aaravchen]

Basically you need a server, which you host, pay someone else to host for you, or you join am existing server someone else hosts. Then you find a client. There are a ton of clients around, but it's like picking a browser before Chrome ate the world. Tons of options and everyone has thier own opinions and information about them.

[pseudalopex]

Core and advanced meant the compliance suites.[1]

[1] https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0479.html

[mfru]

Conversations is a great Android client (also brings their own backend instance if you don't want to host your own), I don't know about iOS or server though.

[nicoco]

https://monal-im.org/ is my personal recommendation for iOS.