My friends are open to leaving Discord which has finally given me a reason to look into Element/Matrix. I found the install instructions and am immediately put off. Is this it? No official docker compose? 😞
You must log in or # to comment.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CSAM Child Sexual Abuse Material LVM (Linux) Logical Volume Manager for filesystem mapping SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption TLS Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) k8s Kubernetes container management package
[Thread #85 for this comm, first seen 12th Feb 2026, 01:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
If you decide to do this, make sure you block matrix[dot]org, as they host and share a lot of CSAM on that homeserver.
Firstly, I wish you the best of luck in your community’s journey away from Discord. This may be a good time to assess what your community needs from a new platform, since Discord targeted various use-cases that no single replacement platform can hope to replace in full. Instead, by identifying exactly what your group needs and doesn’t need, that will steer you in the right direction.
As for Element, bear in mind that their community and paid versions do not exactly target a hobbyist self-hosting clientele. Instead, Element is apparently geared more for enterprise on-premises deployment (like Slack, Atlassian JIRA, Asterisk PBX) and that’s probably why the community version is also based on Kubernetes. This doesn’t mean you can’t use it, but their assumptions about deployments are that you have an on-premises cloud.
Fortunately, there are other Matrix homeservers available, including one written in Rust that has both bare metal and Docker deployment instructions. Note that I’m not endorsing this implementation, but only know of it through this FOSDEM talk describing how they dealt with malicious actors.
As an aside, I have briefly considered Matrix before as a group communications platform, but was put off by their poor E2EE decisions, for both the main client implementation and in the protocol itself. Odd as it sounds, poor encryption is worse than no encryption, because of the false assurance it gives. If I did use Matrix, I would not enable E2EE because it doesn’t offer me many privacy guarantees, compared to say, Signal.
This quote from your link on the main client e2ee issues captures the zeitgeist of modern tech so beautifully:
Please keep in mind that this website is a furry blog, first and foremost, that sometimes happens to cover security and cryptography topics.
Forget about synapse and the “official” method. Install Continuwuity a matrix server written in rust, much much more efficient than synapse.
I took some notes while installing it here https://wiki.gardiol.org/doku.php?id=matrix%3Aconduwuit
I didn’t use docker but directly installation is very easy, it’s a single executable.
Oh man I need to look into this synapse is so slow
I’ll look into it, thanks.
I’m still in the information gathering phase. Do you know if the element client works with the continuwuity server? Is it as easy as entering the domain, user, and password in the client?
Any client should be compatible with any server, if both are fairly up to date. Though, I never found a client nor server that are actually fully feature complete. The closest to that are synapse and element
I’d recommend using https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy.
Or try yunohost. Once installed yunohost is managing ssl, domains, install and update matrix and other things if wanted.
Yes, setting up YunoHost on a new Debian VPS was a couple of commands, and having it install Synapse and Element was a few clicks in the UI plus a lot of waiting.
However. I thought of Element as an alternative to Slack or Telegram the way OP thinks of it as an alternative to Discord. I was wrong. Element competes with IRC. This is the only platform from which I’ve seen actual groups of people (FOSS projects) switch to Matrix. I think Matrix focuses on different usage needs than Discord, and trying it with willing Discord users will be an interesting exercise in seeing what perspectives they bring and what issues that raise, but the solution to their problem will be somewhere outside Matrix, and it will be in somewhat distant future, not with the current state of FOSS tools.
Tuwunnel is a corporate-sponsored successor to Conduwuit.
I prefer Continuwuity which is a non for profit successor to Conduwuit.
Beside this, they are probably mostly the same
Which corporation sponsors Tuwunnel?
Idk but apparently the dev of tuwunel was a dick about the fork splitting.
I completely support you moving off of Discord, and I completely support you setting up Matrix. I tried a lot, I think it has the most feature parity. That being said, the biggest thing I regret when setting it up is that I went with Synapse for my backend Matrix server, when there are others.
I’ve heard very good things about Conduit (https://conduit.rs/), mostly that it’s easier to stand up and easier to maintain.
Either way, I think it’s a smart move, and it’s worth the investment. It’s not the easiest to stand up, but operationally our communication should be our own. Expect trial and error, getting one piece up and running, then the next, and then the next. Celebrate small wins like “Today I got it running” and then “Today I got federation working”, and then “Now I have voice working!”. Otherwise it’s going to feel overwhelming.
I believe in the cause, so feel free to DM me if you have any questions, or send me a DM on Matrix :)
Oh, and a very useful tool - https://federationtester.matrix.org/
This will tell you exactly what is wrong with your federation.
12 pages of detailed documentation
Home Gamer: Is this it?
Fair criticism. I just don’t have a lot of free time. I can invest in Element but I wanted to crowd source information to see if it was worth it or if there was an easier way. It doesn’t get much easier than Docker
Helm is what is used for real world software deployments. It has its problems but it’s better than Docker Compose.
Out of curiosity, what makes it better?
A quick search says it’s a package manger for kubernetes. Besides plex, everything I selfhost is just for me. Would you say helm/kubernetes is worth looking into for a hobbyist who doesn’t work in the tech field?
I deal with kubernetes daily for my job and it manages to melt my brain at least a few times a week. It’s not bad… it’s actually great… it’s just… a lot. Like, a lot a lot.
For what it’s worth, I do not use it at home, because I prefer to be getting paid when my brain is melting.
Kubernetes is much more complicated and powerful than Docker, and Docker Compose is more similar to the way you work directly with Kubernetes than it is to Helm, which adds in a templating system. Basically, from a Docker perspective, Helm allows you to configure your compose file, but not just by substituting variables. Helm can make structural changes such as completely adding or removing sections based on the variables used when loading the chart. The output of Helm is YAML, sort of like a compose file.
Kubernetes has a much more complicated system for describing workloads and their resources than Docker Compose, and it is extensible. For example, if you are running on AWS you can have Kubernetes attach EBS volumes to your pods, or if you’re on bare metal you might use LVM, and it’s not limited to things that Kubernetes natively understands like storage volumes: Cert Manager is a common piece of software that is deployed into Kubernetes that takes care of issuing and renewing TLS certificates for other software in Kubernetes.
I used to run Kubernetes at home with ArgoCD, but I’ve moved on to NixOS instead. NixOS is less powerful because it doesn’t have dynamic workload scheduling, but I don’t actually need dynamic workload scheduling or all the configuration necessary to facilitate dynamic workload scheduling in my house, and Nix is much nicer to work with than Helm’s gotmpl templating. Unless you like this kind of stuff or want to get into Kubernetes, you probably want to avoid it for running a few things on one host.
Absolutely no. Kubernetes has it’s benefits and it can make sense to get into it for tinkering etc, but if you just want to set up matrix and not learn an entire new system, stay away from it.
I need to agree here. K8s is only for the real tech savvy people. I’d you are just starting with docker avoid k8s or k3s.
