I would like to ask what people think of conversations. I have a friend who wants me to WhatsApp her but I don’t want to have whatsapp . I’m looking for an open source secure messaging app. Because I will suggest it to her I want to be sure it’s OK private etc.I’m not very well up on apps
I looked at Signal but don’t like the Google binaries and I’m not sure about Signal FOSS which is on fdroid despite an old thread saying it would never be.
I’d go for SimpleX Chat, Conversations is an XMPP client which is one of the oldest messaging protocol, of course more secure than bigtech messengers but still requires you to create an account and trust the third party hosting the server (unless you host your own instance). Then I find the client impractical in terms of UI and local file management.
So you host your own relay, file transfer, etc Simplex servers too? Or just use the default ones that everybody uses from the app developer?
If they’re not that tech-saavy, then Quicksy is even simpler 
Yes smb and xftp. And even without? Still no account/ID and no conversations stored on third party servers.
that’s not true, F-Droid repo does not host Signal, as it’s not FOSS
you have some 3-rd party repo that copies the APK with proprietary Google libs from the signal website, right? Guardian…
what if I’m not online when you are, the messages are never sent nor received? I can remove the servers from the app and it still works?
@ Licaon_kter
I have seen signal FOSS on fdroid
no, not really
You can easily see this by opening its app details in F-Droid Client, on top you’ll see from which 3rd party repository it comes
Ok@ Licaon _kter. I don’t really understand thought it was there because I saw it. How do I quote ? Thank you .
Screenshot-20250219-125217-org-fdroid-fdroid-App-Details-Activity hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB in my fdroid app
Please update F-Droid Client to latest 1.22
Anyway, you can read more about Conversations here: https://conversations.im/
and about the “easier” Quicksy here: https://quicksy.im/
I hadn’t known about Quicksy. That looks great.
A FOSS version of Molly interacts seamlessly with Signal.
You may have been recalling this fork:
Hey how can I host my own server please can u assist me or teach me
I have hosted Ejabber before, it is pretty quick to set up, here is an old post I wrote about it:
https://alaskalinuxuser3.ddns.net/2017/11/14/rwe-ejabberd-failed-to-start-in-debian-wheezy/
There are newer instructions that you can web search for as well, but I mention this to say that ejabber is usually part of the Debian/Ubuntu repositories, so pretty quick to set up.
Just remember that you are opening ports in your router firewall, and may put your home network at risk.
I’m also not very bright, so take this with a grain of salt. 
FYI the blog domain continuously times out and is not reachable.
@alaskalinuxuser
Lol looks like a typical use case… I’m using SxC for years and I never lose any msg: simplexmq/protocol/simplex-messaging.md at stable · simplex-chat/simplexmq · GitHub
There is doc for that Hosting your own SMP Server
