Maybe. Looking like the best option right now.

Oh no, not another Lemony Snikket rabbit hole.

Yeah, I know. I wanted to pack as much info into the title as I can, and it turned out like technobabble. ^^;

I have considered looking into renting a VPS, but considering my friends group does A LOT of voice calling and streaming over Discord I dint think super lightweight is an option. Even so, not having to pay for a server is always better than having to pay any amount for one.

I’ll take a look at ejabberd. Didn’t know there were specific preferences for clients.

It’s a bit of both:

My friends need a drop-in replacement for Discord (or as close as possible), sooner rather than later. My idea for self hosting is to defeat the need of someone hosting a 24/7 server; if we all host our own accounts on our own computers we’d essentially have a peer-to-peer Discord-like group.

The other reason is indeed to learn, because every centralised service has the same problem; it’s not a question if a service will turn bad, but when. It’s an inevitability, and it’s happening faster and more frequently. The only out-way I see is if me and at least some of my friends learn to self-host.