I got distracted from my work so I made some Continuwuity propaganda. Continuwuity is a lightweights Matrix chat server that you can self-host pretty easily. Give it a try :3
I thought this was an ad, then I remembered that I was on lemmy, and I got sad because this is an ad
Is there any reason to use Continuwuity over Tuwunnel?
At first I uwunderstood your comment as a joke, but apparently Tuwunel does in fact exist and it’s a continuation of Conduwuit.
*continuwuation
Yeah, I currently use Tuwunnel for my own matrix homeserver. It’s been really reliable so far.
Matrix’s algorithm is fundamentally broken. I guess it works if you only talk to people you know won’t abuse it, but otherwise it’s easy to split rooms or even re-write their history if you want to…
Damn, I knew it had problems with room stability, but that’s kinda completely ridiculous.
Because it’s not true, and hasn’t been true since 2018 at the latest.
So you’re saying all these concerns have been alleviated ?
Posting a 3 coming on 4 year old post, of course it’s not going to be accurate any more. And that’s for the points that aren’t just fear mongering in the first place.
- Redaction exists and removes the contents of events, while keeping metadata needed for the functionality of the room.
- Any program can handily ignore deletion - back when I used discord I had a handy plugin to view deleted messages for moderation, for example.
- Badly behaving servers can behave badly and it will not affect correctly behaving ones, they will apply redactions as expected.
- “Room joins leaves, etc are permanently a part of the room’s history” well yeah, that’s expected. You can upgrade a room if you want to start from scratch there.
- We can now prevent spammers from ever entering the room with join gates, among other things - but if you’re not running a big public community, then our antispam tech is probably completely unnecessary for you
- Currently, timeline ordering is defined by the server. Continuwuity uses a simple, understandable and secure scheme - it orders by the time your server receives messages.
- As per the above point, this doesn’t affect Continuwuity
- That’s a tradeoff of allowing public rooms with tens of thousands of people in the same app as end-to-end encrypted DMs. Good job Matrix isn’t really meant to be a Signal competitor.
- this point was relevant… Four years ago. You’ll only encounter issues if you’re using a broken server or ancient client now.
- “Started trying to filter recently” god you can tell how outdated this is
- It defines it pretty damn strictly now, and this isn’t an issue in practice for a very long time.
- Mmm yeah I don’t think you’re particularly likely to experience one of those in day-to-day usage.
- and this is false lol
- Ancient and fixed
- False. There are many ways to do this.
- I’ve never encountered this, and it’s impossible in new rooms versions.
- Aand outdated by years again
- see above
- see above
- see above
It’s not as dramatic as GP makes it, but Matrix had been at the prototyping stage and at figuring out its core protocol and state resolution algorithm for more than a decade now, it’s pretty ridiculous in itself.
Here is a link if you want to know more :
This is the homeserver written in Rust, right?
A suggestion: wherever a QR code is included, the human-readable content should be included next to it. Not everyone has a QR code reader handy, or their reader has the bad habit of immediately opening links or apps. In this case, I see that it just goes to https://continuwuity.org/ and is benign, but others may be apprehensive at naked QR codes.
I was very excited when I started seeing QR codes gaining popularity. That excitement was quickly shattered when everyone just started using them improperly and they just made everything more annoying 😮💨
What exactly is “improper use”?
Basically anytime it’s not printed
Putting simple things behind a qrwall. I once went to a presentation and they had that qr code to scan to get the certificate, and I went there without my phone, so I got no certificate I needed it for academic bureaucracy). restaurants with qr-only menus also come to mind. Oh, I also saw once a school with the timetables mural with just qrs and nothing else written, so if new students didn’t have a phone AND mobile internet, they couldn’t find by themselves where and when their classes took place
Lots of people use Lemmy via mobile. How am I supposed to scan a QR code?
Print it out and scan it. Use a barcode reader. Use another mobile. Upload it to a barcode decoder website.
Or I could just scroll past it and not give them the time of day because they were too lazy to post a link, you know, the primary method for navigating the internet for decades now. Why the need to overly complicate things?
You could have done that, but here we are.
Point being, if you can’t be arsed to do the bare minimum and post a fucking link, why should anyone give your post a second look?
I made an NFC/QR code card for my wifi details at home, and that also includes the details written in clear text on the card, since some devices simply don’t do QR (or NFC in my case).
It is!
Yeah, I see your point, and I included the link in the alt text. On the actual design itself though, any URL I wrote in could be completely different from the QR so it seems slightly pointless - especially as it would just be writing Continuwuity a third time haha
Including the URL isn’t to act as a check on the contents of the QR code, but to act as an alternative for those who don’t want to scan it at all.
The alternative is to search the name right next to the code in this design
I know you are in good faith (and I already run my continuwuity server!), but in ppractical terms you are suggesting to use Google, and I don’t want to. Expecially for something you could have included in text in the post.
edit: I am reminded of Richard Stallman spelling out full URLs during conferences, complete with subdirectories. It is silly, but it works.
Or just post the link.
This is not a good idea: having to search means an implicit reliance on a search engine. Even with a trustworthy web search – and those are becoming fewer and fewer – why add this complication?
Even worse is when there’s an adversary: what would stop someone from buying getcontinuwuity.org but have it be pro-Big Tech propaganda, with tracking cookies galore, and then pay Google or Bing to put it at the top of the web search results?
Whereas in 2026, a URL is not confusing at all to include. Even big brands might not own their own product name’s domain. This exact problem came up just six days ago: https://www.neowin.net/news/paintnet-can-finally-be-downloaded-from-the-right-place/
I can see a lot of opinions & comments on the QR part and, with respect, I’d like to add that I’m reading this post on a device where I’d like to view the site on the same device, so a QR isn’t best for this platform.
I’d go a little further and say that QRs and really only useful for a mediim where you want the user to use a 2nd device (printed media, BSODs, etc)
Also putting the URL in the (for my reader) non-clickable alt-text doesn’t help either
Again, with respect, you’re making it harder for your audience to reach you, not easier.
Agreed that QR codes should be accompanied by text links for accessibility, because many times the scanning fails due to bad light, old camera or shaky hands.
Thst branding reminds me of the extensive complaints of Anubis beeing too weaboo for production applications lol.
What do weaboos have to do with Egyptian gods?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anubis_(software)
Talking about this as if people couldn’t replace the images here with whatever they wanted https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/tree/main/web/static/img
Damn weaboos really do be making everything an anime girl
Well thanks for at least explaining what it is, but isn’t Matrix already self hostable? Anyway what’s wrong with IRC?
It’s based on conduit, which itself is really a lot better for self-hosting than synapse or dendrite.
I ran conduit on an atom d2550 alongside other services and it basically idled. Running synapse or dendrite on the same machine made the whole machine max out permanently.
Irc is fine, but not federated…
Matrix is a protocol, not a software. Continuwuity is one of the few servers for this protocol.
Respectfully, this software could solve all my problems in life, and I would still struggle to ask my friends to “federate with my continuwuity server so we can chat”
Then call it Matrix. They don’t need to know and probably don’t care about the specific server software you’re using.
Respectfully, you have no idea how Matrix works and I know you don’t use it if you think you have to tell people what backend you use for them to connect to you.
You can always change the name on your instance. Agree that there is no reason to use the project name, especially in this case.
Its just called a matrix server, you don’t need to tell anyone the specific kind.
be warned that continuwuity phones home by default to fetch its news and feed it to the admin, you may want to turn that off before booting first time
That sort of telemetry should be opt in, not opt out
Not telemetry? Continuwuity just uses it to post release announcements to the admin room; I think there’s a way to disable it if you prefer.
It’s not telemetry.
while i don’t want to throw shade on the developers’ intentions, nor have any real proof of what data is being kept, a fetch request bears by minimum the source ip (which can be geolocated) and the fact that the homeserver exists and runs continuwuity.
i’d suggest a matrix channel as alternative, so hosters can opt-in by joining. plus, by leveraging the matrix protocol, such announcements become federated push notifications, meaning they could come from any homeserver (limiting ip logging) and don’t imply the continued existence of such deployment, or the software which is being run
even converting such mechanism to an opt-out “auto-join announcements channel” would be more privacy respecting
BREAKING - Release 0.1 of DON’T is now available - DON’T does absolutely nothing when you start it, except to present an enormous Consent List of everything it can do if you let it. Outraged digital freedom advocates are criticizing what they call excessive download times, sluggish support, and that the app takes up memory space without doing anything.
phones home by default to fetch its news and feed it to the admin
What is that and why is it bad?
you may want to turn that off before booting first time
How do you do that?
I assume they’re referring to the announcement check, configurable via an option in your config file. It’s what we use to make sure everyone knows about important things like security updates.
Edit: Lemmy keeps breaking the link, it’s under allow_announcements_check
Well if that is your only negative point, it must be pretty good.
it absolutely is! honestly all matrix homeservers are impressive, the protocol is not for the faint of heart
Does it work for non-furries(fleshies?)?
I was under the impression that they preferred to be referred to as ‘skinnies’. We are all flesh, after all… well except protogen…
I’m planning on trying to self-host it on OpenBSD ngl. I do wonder. Does continuwuity support multiple independent domains on a single instance like Ejabberd does?
We have a few BSD users! And no, it doesn’t.
We really want to use Matrix so bad, but none of them have every feature we need to replace discord atm.
It’s not really designed to be a Discord replacement. It’s a messaging app/protocol that can do voice/video calls. Discord is a passive state voice / video / text channel app that was designed to create spaces for different topics. Matrix has added a similar hierarchical feature as an option, but its not the same and I don’t think it was meant to be.
We mean, overall we need something to text (plus send files), call, video/screen share and bonus for emojis, stickers and gifs. We get that discord and matrix isn’t really the same thing but the end result and use case is :/ So it would be a replacement for us
overall we need something to text
pretty much Matrix’s entire point
(plus send files)
also implemented in pretty much every server and client; I think even Element can send files
call
look into e.g. #matrixrtc:continuwuity.org — sable requires a setting to show the call button in non-DM rooms
video/screen share
unfortunately this is the only thing I’m not confident is supported
bonus for emojis, stickers
should be available with any im.ponies-compatible client such as sable
Screen share works, although some browsers don’t capture audio
Doesn’t Matrix do everything you just listed?
Not the screen share which is pretty important to us. Can’t get it to work 90% of the time.
You should file an issue.
Where we had the issues, we did report them at the time. It was a while ago, so can’t remember which ones that we tried had issues. Have it in our plans to try a few again soon next time we get free time
Bingpot! Features trump objections, which is how any industry knows it doesn’t really have to listen to users all that much. Deep down, addicts really don’t care if their heroin is ethically sourced from sustainably managed small-lot producers.
Pretty sure those are basic features of a community messaging/vc platform. Can survive perfectly fine and happily with less features if it meant that it was open source or we could host it ourselves.
Ive been keeping an eye on Movim for a discord alternative, I think spaces got added recently.
Haven’t heard of this one! Will look more into this
It’s not matrix-based, but: Haven. It’s what I setup the… second? third? time discord had burned their users. The only thing missing for me is Xbox support, as several of my social circle are console gamers. But for pc users, it’s got everything I need.
Will look into this, going to have our own server eventually so this would help a lot! ^^
Why do useful FOSS things always have the worst names that make it hard to spread.
Well, it startend with conduit. That was a respectable name. The development slowed down and someone wasnt happy abput not getting pr merged. Then it got forked to conduwuit.
Speed picked back up. There was later a massive meltdown for some reason. To successors emerged continuwuity and tuwunel.
There’s almost always a backstory for why the makers choose the name they did, but that doesn’t change the harmful result. A bad name seriously limits how much the software will ever get adopted. Heck, if there was a FOSS project i cared about enough then i would fork it and keep everything the same except give it a more palatable name.
If the fucking name of a project is the reason you won’t use it, then by all means, don’t. We’re not missing you.
Myopic take. Generally projects are healthier when they have a larger userbase
Then use it?
I’m not taking about me personally using it or not using it
Some users are not worth having.
When they have good names they get stolen.
Try took up about gemini protocol.
Lots of folks also like the unmarketable names, because you know that it’s not a corporate project. You’re hearing about it, because it’s actually good, and not just because some startup got VC money to do marketing.
Heck, the reverse is true as well. This project is better specifically because it has that name. You just know some transfemmes are tirelessly hacking away at it, because they enjoy the silly name.
Do they have MAS support yet? I kinda need my single signon :p
Support for delegation to an external IDP (without MAS) is a work-in-progress
and what about QR code login? I think MAS is required for that
I don’t understand why people need SSO.
Every place I’ve every worked that had SSO had an outage, and then nobody could log in to anything.
SSO moar leik single point of failure amirite?
yeah same, I don’t understand why people need DNS. Every place I’ve ever worked at that used DNS had an outage, and nobody could get into anything
This really is a bizarre thread, but anyways, thank you for sharing.
I don’t mind the name. It’s pride month so I figure the community would turn the silly up a notch.
Im not a tech person but, I’m gonna try it out. Thanks OP.
