just asking what is a good one
Because it hasn’t been mentioned:
IRC
Sometime also mentioned SimpleX, which I’m looking into myself, but have no experience currently.
For one to one chats and the occasional group chat? XMPP is pretty awesome and has lots of good clients (Conversations on Android, Monal on iDevices, Dino, Gajim, etc. on Linux)
If you want something closer to Discord and host public communities or very large chatrooms, Matrix is very good. You can self-host it with Continuwuity, and there are lots of clients too (Cinny, FluffyChat, Element, Fractal, NeoChat, etc.)
If you just need voice chat, Mumble is simple and works well.
Matrix, and I recommend selfhosting Continuwuity as it is lightweight and easy to spin up. Your other option could be XMPP with Snikket or proper Prosody.
Though do you have any particular features you wanna bring over from Facebook Messenger?
Continuwuity is so easy the setup and maintain. If you want to self host a matrix server, I couldn’t recommend this enough.
simplex
Are you asking just for general self-hosted messengers? Why did you mention Facebook specifically?
Matrix
but what good client that isnt designed for just businesses
I think the clients are all better lately. For Android I prefer Schildi Chat Next. For most everything else we use my self hosted Cinny web app. My only iPhone user likes elementX. Fluffy Chat is solid for messaging only, but I did not like that it can’t do the voice and video calls. They may have added that by now, I’m not an expert.
Cinny is an awesome desktop client, as is Element, Fractal (GNOME, no spaces support though) and NeoChat (KDE)
For mobile, I personally prefer FluffyChat, but there’s other options too.
Personally I like Sable, it feels closer to Discord, has call support, and “just works”
Seconding Sable.
Gomuks and Sable
I’d say Element is the one to go for. A list of clients is available here:
https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/
Matrix and element clients
I tried a bunch. Right now I’m running Snikket (xmpp) and it’s been very reliable.
Pidgin, maybe. I like it.
Edit: Oops, I might have misread/misunderstood what you were asking. If you’re asking about server software, I’d suggest XMPP :)
Though I know Matrix is very popular (as shown by people others suggesting it)
Man, I haven’t used pidgin in almost 20 years. Throwback, or whatever the kids say these days.
Man I remember using Pidgin for ICQ!
