JASN_DE

XMPP? Matrix?

That’s cute, but very much a bubble view. Usually not worth the effort unless the devs themselves are users.

Why do I need a messaging system in the first place?

You might not need one, but the majority of users want and/or need one for user management, password reset, notifications etc.

And it is being developed for the majority of users.

Do you know of any other near-universal messaging system to use instead?

Edit: also, the downsides you mentioned depend really hard on the email service you choose to use, or choose to host yourself.

self-hosting

and people who want it to work with minimal friction.

We’re talking (potentially) highly sensitive contents here for the most part. Yes, selfhosting has become easier than ever, but at the same time more people who basically lack the experience and/or patience to actually understand what they’re doing want to start selfhosting. And that simply doesn’t end well in an alarmingly high number of cases.

Yeah sure, of course there are tools that can make life easier. But have a look at the “big” self-hosting packages. A lot of them will need at least some manual configuration. Then there’s the “exposing a host to the open net” aspect, which can (and usually will) introduce a whole different level of attack surfaces.

So combine that with the ever-growing number of self-hosters, and of course you will notice more advice like that.

Define “safe”?

Budget? Kind of photography you want to try?

Nextcloud (later Opencloud) and Immich as primary data sources, backup to:

• server itself, on mirrored drives
• NAS
• 2 external drives periodically (1-2x per week)
• off site cloud data storage

This worked and works well for me.

Something without a GUI.

Your ISP will know which sites you visited, even when they cannot specifically say what you downloaded.

Just assume everything you do online is logged at some point.

The 1070 is probably a waste of power.

IF you’re going the secondhand enterprise gear route, check which drives you can actually use in them. The Dell will likely only take a dozen or so drive models, sometimes locked down to Dell-flashed firmwares. And those can be expensive.