`continuwuity` vs `tuwunel`: where to go from `conduwuit`? (Update: probably `continuwuity`.)
from smiletolerantly@awful.systems to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 21 Jul 13:07
https://awful.systems/post/5029223

If you’ve been selfhosting conduit or conduwuit, you probabl are aware that the conduwuit project was discontinued a couple months back.

I’ve been holding out on updating my matrix homeserver until it becomes clear which fork(s) will survive long term.

I feel like I can’t put off updating for much longer now, plus the tuwunel nixpkg and -module were merged yesterday, so now the two most promising forks are both options for me.

Still, I’m unsure what route to take. Here’s my thoughts:

In short: I fucking hate community drama. What fork did you go with? Is there anything else to consider? I just want an up-to-date matrix homeserver, and not to have to tell my users “sorry, starting from scratch because we picked the wrong fork…”

Update: there’s been some back and forth on the nixpkgs PR, esp. one user who posted a lot of receipts here:

@scvalex @queeek180 @Askhalion you wanted links, here’s some links :)

claim legitimacy over or de legitimise other projects:

matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$V9aN1Wn0pId-JWbxH1…
matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$IsfOfe8anRYqbRAwj7…
matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$-Bswk96jj3ns8xpSIS… (ironic)
matrix.to/#/#meowlnir:maunium.net/$zOmf7-NIHfQ_f_… (ironic that he asked matrix.to/#/#meowlnir:maunium.net/$nE57Bi_DmvodZJ… despite having cherrypicked a bunch of fixes from continuwuity already)
matrix.to/#/#tuwunel:grin.hu/$svIUeuWfm2VWuHGSUMe… (“June and I dealt with another “continuwuity” called “grapevine” last year”)

threats against the project:

matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$o27P102ebbFa9U80e-…
matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$priRlTsBuH2YfTo_pb…

personal threats:

matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$5YefXN_uVR5WiGfj32…
matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$L-dXYMXucfJiLkyc5d…

attempting to get security details released early (knowing only he and three other servers have finished implementing):

matrix.to/#/!NasysSDfxKxZBzJJoE:matrix.org/$_d2wJ…
matrix.to/#/#tuwunel:grin.hu/$mgi2dDGnL-L9Jqjm_YZ…

other trivia:

Jason getting his server ACL’ed from all foundation rooms:
matrix.to/#/!WuBtumawCeOGEieRrp:matrix.org/$u8YRB…` - zemos.net ban
matrix.to/#/!WuBtumawCeOGEieRrp:matrix.org/$l8pKC… - wildcard ban on his domain

if any of these events get redacted, feel free to reach out and I will provide the original events - unredacted. just as another layer of certainty, when i provide the events, you can verify the server signing keys yourself, fairly trivially, as well as calculate the event ID (which is a hash). fetching the event from your $CONDUWUIT_DESCENDANT homeserver is as simple as running @conduit debug get-pdu $id in your admin room, as well as checking validity with @conduit debug verify-json or @conduit debug verify-pdu.

UPDATE: i’ve just been informed json signing is based on the redacted event, not the full input.

Honestly, that first link is all the info I needed. Keep reading, <100 messages and it becomes clear that I do not want to put the continuation of my homeserver into Jasons/tuwunels hands. Going to migrate to continuwuity later today.

#selfhosted

threaded - newest

hendrik@palaver.p3x.de on 21 Jul 13:31 next collapse

I'm in the same boat. Keep me updated if you go forwards. I think I'm going to wait 2 more weeks or so and then make a decision. Community-driven sounds nice. I wasn't aware of cuntinuwuity yet. And yes, all the drama and burnt-out people isn't nice or healthy at all. It's a shame that this is the state of messengers these days.

smiletolerantly@awful.systems on 21 Jul 17:24 collapse

Roger, will do.

Yeah, community driven sounds like unless there’s new drama. But yeah, currently tending towards continuwuity. Purely vibes based from snooping around both repos.

hendrik@palaver.p3x.de on 24 Jul 14:15 collapse

Thanks for your update here. Decision seems pretty easy then. I'll see if I can find some time next week, do a database snapshot and move to continuwuity as well.

smiletolerantly@awful.systems on 24 Jul 14:30 collapse

Ah crap, forgot to ping you! Sorry!!

Yep, easy decision now. Migration went smoothly, just had to move the state dir and chown it to continuwuity:continuwuity. Might be different on docker though, no idea, sorry 😄

hendrik@palaver.p3x.de on 24 Jul 22:02 collapse

No worries, I pressed PieFed's notification bell, so you pinged me by adding the top-level comment about the update 😊 I happen to be using NixOS as well. So it's going to be the same. Now lets hope this project turns out good.

smiletolerantly@awful.systems on 25 Jul 04:22 collapse

Ah, nice. In that case just beware to move /var/lib/private/conduwuit to /var/lib/private/continuwuity, not /var/lib/conduwuit to its counterpart

gravitywell@sh.itjust.works on 21 Jul 17:30 next collapse

I only setup my server a month ago. it seemed like continuwuity was the most active so thats what i went with.

smiletolerantly@awful.systems on 21 Jul 17:32 collapse

Nice, how’s it been going?

arisunz@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 21 Jul 17:43 next collapse

Gotta be honest, I got fed up and just… shut down my server when conduwuit died. I might come back to matrix if the ecosystem becomes less of a joke, but I’m really not holding my breath about it. Community drama is the worst.

smiletolerantly@awful.systems on 21 Jul 20:50 collapse

Understandable. Funny thing is, I’m not even federated; I think that keeps me away from a lot of drama.

But yeah. The drama sucks, and so does the Matrix Foundation. So many dumb decisions, so many years old issues that could easily boost acceptance and usability, but… Nah. No better alternatives around though if you want to own your data, have proper multi-client support, and at least the option to federate.

Mora@pawb.social on 22 Jul 07:23 collapse

No better alternatives around though if you want to own your data, have proper multi-client support, and at least the option to federate.

What about XMPP? What can Matrix do, that XMPP cant?

smiletolerantly@awful.systems on 22 Jul 07:47 collapse

Hm, fair enough, I actually have very little experience with XMPP. (Only through prosody, which I personally am on a war footing with.) From a cursory glance, I also couldn’t find an Android lient I’d really want to use, but of course that is subjective.

In any case: I have a matrix server up and running, and it has been a pain to get friends and family on there; I do not want to do all of that again with a new protocol/clients. As long as it’s sustainable, I want to stay with the same server installation, and that means choosing a conduwuit for me.

Mora@pawb.social on 22 Jul 12:56 collapse

Understandable, trying to move friends and family between platforms is an herculean effort.

For everyone else interested in XMPP, you might want to check out:

gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com on 22 Jul 06:02 next collapse

what’s wrong with conduit proper?

smiletolerantly@awful.systems on 22 Jul 06:11 collapse

There’s nothing technically wrong with it, it’s just a glacial development speed. I tried contributing there myself when I wanted a specific feature (which had been requested years prior by someone else and was deemed a good idea), it took months before I even got a single comment back.

In the meantime, I had switched to conduwuit because it was a much, MUCH more active project. However, conduwuit has diverged substantially from conduit, including irreconcilable database changes, so it is not possible to migrate back, that would require starting from a fresh slate and loosing all user data.

daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 22 Jul 06:46 next collapse

I don’t really like synapse, because it performs really bad. But at least it has a stable development. So that’s what I use.

But more and more I’m questioning if matrix is really the federated messaging platform we want. A lot of the drama and development issues of any synapse alternative seem to have their roots in how hard and unsatisfactory is trying to follow the matrix protocol which is subdued to synapse development in a weird form, apparently.

I still use it. But I’m too tired of the drama, and wondering if there’s even a chance for a long term synapse alternative, or if matrix devs are actually doing something that prevents that for ever happening.

smiletolerantly@awful.systems on 22 Jul 07:50 collapse

Yes, completely agree. It seems that the matrix foundation could easily take a different path to allow the community to flourish and third-party servers to have a much easier time. Since I’m not federated, I wouldn’t even mind if whatever fork I’ll end up on eventually says “fuck this, we’re not following synapse specs any more”.

But yeah, I am sure selling premium accounts on matrix.org is what will save the matrix ecosystem… 🤦🏼‍♀️

sunglocto@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 22 Jul 06:57 next collapse

After conduwuit died, I just completely stopped using Matrix. I have zero faith in the current developers of these forks to not do the same bullshit that June did.

hendrik@palaver.p3x.de on 22 Jul 07:20 next collapse

What do the few people here who stop using Matrix altogether, replace it with? XMPP? Or do you just use Signal or the commercial messengers eveeyone uses?

smiletolerantly@awful.systems on 22 Jul 07:47 collapse

Understandable.

smiletolerantly@awful.systems on 24 Jul 06:26 collapse

Update: seems to me tuwunel is drama waiting to happen. See updated post for details.