We have a private Prosody server on a VPS. The device issue may have been a setting you needed to change on your clients. By default there’s a built in delay when sending notifications to multiple devices, so whatever is seen as your active device will get the updates in real time and the others won’t. I have all mine set to no delay and all the messages sync instantly on PC and phone, assuming the phone isn’t doing any type of power or data saving that messes things up.

Gajim on PC (Linux) and Monocles on mobile (Android) are my favorites. Gajim is available on every desktop platform you mentioned. Monocles is a fork of conversations.im.

I don’t actually have a recommendation for iOS as I don’t use it. I know at least one person in our usual group does though, so I’m assuming there’s a client on that side that doesn’t suck?

Curious about what wasn’t working with matrix?

Performance was never amazing even with a dedicated server for local users. We also had insane issues with pedos and traffickers joining our rooms to spam their telegram links or CSAM. It got to the point that it wasn’t fun to use and Matrix never seemed to care. They claim to be tough on that type of thing but our experience didn’t reflect that.

how XMPP is comparing?

More reliable which counts for a lot. Still working through some stuff with our host and messing with some add-ons for XMPP but over all everyone is happier.

I haven’t used XMPP in like over a decade. Is it still about the same? Better? I don’t think I was that aware of its group abilities.

I’d say it’s roughly on par with most of the better known chat solutions these days if you’re looking for something that’s reliable but not bleeding edge. It’s been working well for us, YMMV. Groups are a thing and work well and there are even bridges to Matrix and many other platforms.

How does the excryption compare? about the same if you choose the right option?

Default is blind trust OMEMO which works very well. I recommend checking it out for yourself if you aren’t familiar to make sure it’s appropriate for your threat model.

You got a favorite linux client?

Gajim was the early favorite and I haven’t found anything compelling enough to change. I’ve tried probably a dozen clients total across various platforms and Gajim mostly just works. These days that counts for a lot with me.

(I know I am pestering you with too many questions, feel free to ignore)

Nothing but love here mate. Some days I have time to answer, sometimes I don’t. It’s never personal. 💚

We had a small group (under 50 people) that used it daily for several months as our primary means of communication after moving from Matrix. I think the privacy/anonymity features are sound, and the creator/lead dev seemed to be making the removal and prevention of CSAM on the platform a priority which is great.

We always had problems though. Users on iOS and Windows had regular problems with the chat losing track of where it was, images not loading, images getting stuck as your “last read” position, etc. Users on all platforms including Linux and Android would randomly lose the ability to see messages from others in rooms, fail to receive notifications, or upload images that only they could see. There’s also a fair bit of feature disparity across platforms. While we were using it iOS lacked the ability to mark all messages in a room as read, meaning some people were stuck scrolling slowly through hundreds of messages a day or living with unread message counts in the thousands.

We ended up moving to XMPP. Maybe in the future when the platform is more evenly developed we’ll give it another shot, but for now XMPP is working better for everyone across multiple platforms.