I want to move a group of friends from Slack to a self-hosted chat server. We don't need voice calling, screen sharing, LDAP, or anything complex like that. But, we do want link expansion, inline photos, threads, and channels. Basically, just the chitchat part of Slack.
I've looked around quite a bit and it seems that there are overkill projects (rocket.chat, element.io, etc) and underkill projects (plume.chat) but I found nothing in the middle.
Do you know of a good solution?
(no, not IRC)
@trevorflowers Could you elaborate on what about rocketchat feels overkill for you? I found it to be not too bloated and really easy to deploy.
I've used it as a temporary chat thing that we spun up for the Our Networks conference a few years ago and we spun it down once it served its purpose.
@trevorflowers That's fair. For what it's worth, the integrations are totally optional and don't get in your face about it.
This is what I used: https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/rocket-chat?action=deploy&refcode=1940fe28bd31
@mauve I have no first-hand experience with it so this is just my impression but it seems like it has a bazillion options for integrations, authentication methods, themes, etc. I don't need/want any of that. Also, the marketing site for their SaaS stuff creeps me out a bit and I'm clearly not their target user. If it's easy to deploy then I might give it a try anyway.