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Comment by benatkin | Hacker News Reader

I specifically mentioned something that I was more comfortable with: GitLab

So I don't know where you got "there's nowhere for you to go" from.

Element has open source apps and that's great. It just seems to not have a very strong culture of people self-hosting it. Though one comment did provide me a place to look and I found this and am now more comfortable with it. https://schildi.chat/ Still it would be great to see it have some big instances like GitLab does with Debian, Freedesktop, and others. Then I wouldn't feel I was going it alone if I self-hosted it.

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Oh! Well, a couple things:

- Matrix is the protocol, Element is confusingly both the hosting service and the mobile app, and Synapse is the server -- just to get terminology right

- Matrix actually does the "multiple clients" thing really right [0]

- I think a lot of people self-host; I did and there are a few others in this thread. It's easy if you've any experience hosting web API servers. A core Matrix goal is to be decentralized, so self-hosting is thus also a core goal. You can see docs here [1], or docs for Docker here [2] if that's your thing.

[0]: https://matrix.org/clients/

[1]: https://matrix-org.github.io/synapse/latest/

[2]: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/tree/master/docker

Like https://element.debian.social for instance? ;)

Yeah that's pretty good. Not quite to where GitLab is, but in the right direction. GitLab is really helpful with self-hosting.

What do you mean not quite? There are much more options than with GitLab, and a lot of people are self-hosting it actually.

I mean Element's website says very little about installing it and encourages using mobile apps which require going through the app store, while GitLab has all kinds of resources for self-hosting. They do try to steer you to self-hosting the ee version though.

Element: landing page https://element.io/solutions/self-hosted-or-cloud-collaborat...

GitLab: all the things https://about.gitlab.com/install/ at the bottom is the Debian package, but if you go to the Docker Page and click the username you can see gitlab-ce there as well.

Gitlab and Element's website structure is different. element.io is the site for the managed product, so even their "on-premise" installer is meant to be used in a commercial relationship. For install docs you'd probably have to purchase their product (which isn't available freely).

You probably want to read the open-source software's installation instructions at: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web

TLDR, check out the project, run `yarn install`, then edit the config file, then `yarn build`.

And, yes, that is all there is to it. It's significantly simpler to deploy than GitLab.

Finally, you keep mentioning self-hosting; you _can_ just use a non-self hosted application like the downloadable version of Element, SchildiChat, Fluffychat, or any other client.

No reason to bring hosting into the mix for the client, if that's causing concern.

Using an official build of element makes it feel less open, unless the builds are reproducible. Are they?

To me it looks like they come with proprietary stuff: https://element.io/pricing

Especially Group Sync seems like something to drive you into their paid offerings, I assume by keeping the code close to the vest.

Man at this point you're just looking for excuses.

You can host bridges yourself too

https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/

This seems like goalpost moving.

You yourself say in a different comment that you are currently assessing Element: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34779070. Either you have a formed opinion Matrix, or you don't. Which one is it?

You keep saying Element instead of Matrix, and obviating the whole Matrix ecosystem. Matrix protocol has several server implementations, and many more things around: https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now

https://hub.docker.com/r/vectorim/element-web

How did you install Gitlab without an official build (such as the official docker images and Debian packages from their own APT repo)?

https://hub.docker.com/r/gitlab/gitlab-ce

> The Dockerfile used for building public images is in Omnibus Repository

Element is a for profit company that creates one set of clients and a hosted service for the matrix protocol. To find alternatives, look at https://matrix.org/discover/

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