They probably used on of these federation “helper” scripts that just siphons up the entire fediverse. That is just a bad idea and results in a bloated database like they were complaining about.

Voice call implementation in Gajim is only waiting for an upstream improvement, it is already working otherwise. Sadly upstream seems slow in fixing this.

You can try this unofficial Windows version of Dino though, which supports calls: https://github.com/mxlgv/dino

Edit: and there is of course always Movim, which works fine in most browsers and supports 1:1 calls.

XMPP clients for Android are great, for iOS a bit less so. On Windows / Linux Gajim is probably the best option right now. JoinJabber.org has a good list of up to date clients (do not use Pidgin, it’s horrible and super outdated).

In general the main downside compared to Discord is the lack of voice-channels. 1:1 voice or video calls work great with the Android clients and group calls are partially supported in some desktop clients (that is currently very active field of development for XMPP clients).

Why wouldn’t XMPP work? It fulfills all your requirements and has nice modern apps, especially for mobile. Definitely better than Matrix.

The easiest to get started with it would be setting up a Snikket server (Prosody based, but pre-configured for small private groups).

If you connect via 10gbit PCIe extension cards it is often a question of how many PCIe channels the CPU has and if the mainboard you are using has these connected directly to the CPU or needs to pass them through the mainboard chipset which is much slower.

There are external GPU cases that might work with your laptop, but at least on older models these were relatively bandwidth limited which doesn’t matter that much for gaming, but I guess it might cause more problems with AI workloads? On the other hand, maybe not if the model fits completely into the vRAM of the m40?

SimpleX is not suitable for larger group chats.

XMPP has a few quite popular privacy related public channels: https://search.jabber.network/search?q=privacy

(For those unaware: xmpp participant counts are actively connected users, not like Matrix or Discord that counts who ever joined the room years ago and never came back).

You can always encrypt the backups you upload there.

Depending on the specs of the shared webspace it is possible to install some php based webdav software to easily sync files with it. KaraDAV for example.

Have you consider using a note taking app with server sync instead of abusing a chat service for the same thing?

Any pc with two network ports and Ipfire will do. Easy to set up and configure.

Maybe comments are counted as posts too?

No Sharkey/Misskey is more like Mastodon, but with more playful features like emoji reactions and animated text.

Threads is not included, but Mastodon had a lot more Twitter refugees.

Glinet makes travel routers with OpenWrt on them and internal microSD slots as well as external USB ports. Pretty easy to turn those into a media server as well.

The audio is very quiet, it’s probably a microphone or post processing issue.

Castropod is cool, maybe you can try to figure out why it doesn’t properly federate with Lemmy and file some issues on both sides?

Pcie slots also allow adding more nvme ssd drives, although sadly most mainboards do not support pcie bifurcation, so you will be limited to a single nvme ssd per slot.

Up to RPi4 the power efficiency was a lot better, but performance wise you really struggled due to lack of options to connect faster storage. With the RPi5 becoming more power hungry (but also more performant) it is less clear cut, and price wise a refurbished x86 pc isn’t really more expensive either.

All in all I would say the benefits of using standard x86 outweigh the slightly higher power use these days. RPis are still good if you need the specific hardware GPIO etc. that is has though. But for self-hosting go for x86 and be mindful of peak loads (these CPUs become much more power hungry on higher clock-speeds, especially turbo-boost).

Look of a refurbished thinclient with a 6th or 7th gen Intel CPU with the “T” at the end (for example i5 6500T). Those are basically power optimized mobile CPUs for desktop PCs. Those are currently best value for money IMHO.

Alternatively use an old laptop, which is great for beginners, but storage extension will be very limited.

If all you want is Nextcloud, you are probably better off getting a managed service like this: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share/

https://snikket.org/

It’s just an easy to setup XMPP server, so you get full federation out of the box.

It would be ok, but a bit lonely, no?

Better look into Snikket.