Oh wow, this chat has blown up with messages and I doubt anybody will see this message at this point, but here we go.

During these weeks of being at home and having lots of free time after work, I've been doing _projects_. For a while, I've been reading how people rant about Matrix always on HN, and I finally decided to suck it, install my own home server and try it out by myself.

The installation for sure requires a bit of understanding about DNS and you kind of (if you want things to be simpler) need two servers: one for your root domain and other for your matrix server. If you nail these two things correctly, can wait a bit for the DNS records to spread out in the network, you'll get the matrix federation working quite nicely.

I highly recommend using some of the automated tools, such as the ansible playbook[0] to help you out maintaining the server. It makes setting up the bridges for other chat platforms very easy.

I have to say, having one application for all my chats. The same interface, no need to install five apps to talk with people, this all is so nice. It's definitely worth the trouble, even when with Synapse you need a bit more powerful server, like four gigs of RAM is a good minimum for a server and all the bridges. Now we only need to have an easy way to install the clients, so we can help our not so technologically advanced friends to join. I think Google knows this; how in 2021 people are forming their own communities, outside of the power of the big corporations. Now Matrix is quite technology oriented, it feels like IRC back in the 90s which I really enjoy!