XMPP used to be pretty popular until google EEEd it afaik. Matrix is kind of an attempt to build on XMPPs "fall from grace" if you will. It's still very good from what I hear and some say the server is vastly more efficient but I only tried matrix and it works pretty well.
Matrix's most feature complete server is synapse, which is written in python. Hence not very efficient and scalable.
It's mostly fine, but to really go big, one of the other server implementations will need to be used, but none of them achieve feature-parity with synapse as far as I know.
I agree that matrix isnt infinitely scalable, which is a great thing imo.
The reason being that most people, especially users, are brainwashed into thinking that centralization is normal or good. It is neither.
Ideally every small group of like 10-100 people has a small server which is one out of millions at some point. Thats the idea of the fediverse.
My server federates with some 8000 servers at this point which is great and matrix.org has like 30% of all users afaik (which are over 100mil in total at this point)
And before I hear the always same argument: yes, it is hard to find peeps on matrix sometimes (it is a lot harder on whatsapp). Be the change you want to see and help with sites like joinmatrix.org
Yes, I do. Federation is a joke in terms of resource usage. It really depends on your system and config of course but I host 4 fediverse services and a lot more stuff which doesnt even touch the 10% cpu utilization, doesnt touch 50% of my ram.
The information you find online is mostly outdated and people who dont self host dont have barely any real knowledge about the services.
I encourage you to try for yourself so you can see what works and what doesnt. Feel free to hit me up if you want to know anything about it.
I run a multi user environment with 4 fedi services, 2 other public websites, many surrounding services (ie heimdall, nginx, portainer, grafana, etc) and a minecraft server on one machine, I dont touch 10% cpu utilization. I get hundreds of hits per minute (which not a lot compared to big websites, i know).
I‘m probably gonna buy the cheapest banana pi or whatever equivalent and try running all of it on that machine just to prove that most people have no idea what they are talking about.
Hosting any fedi service today is no problem if you have skills and dedication. Any 4 core old laptop should easily do the trick, provided you immediately delete windows.
My situation is much like yours, except I wrote a script which will suspend services when transcodes or game servers cause the system to approach resource capacity, to prevent more users from joining games and deteriorating the experience for everyone.
I know for a fact people using pies or old laptops can't do what my system does, because I personally know people who have tried. They can't even get a basic media server going that performs anywhere near mine, in the menus.