[cjmoran]

The other comments already gave you some great info, but I'll just link some good documentation for anyone looking to get started. I discovered Matrix the other day and decided to set up a toy matrix-synapse server, which took less than two days' worth of free time for someone with a programming background and no serious IT expertise.

Build matrix-synapse server from source: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse

Install matrix-synapse server on a DO droplet (the smallest/cheapest droplet or excess resources on an existing one should be plenty): https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-inst...

I hope this project gets more traction because it's a fantastic, secure, self-hosted, full-featured, (inhales), open-source version of slack/telegram/kind of discord. Not perfect yet, but really great so far. Even pretty easy to set up e2e-encrypted voice and video calling through your server.

[majewsky]

> Build matrix-synapse server from source: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse

Or use a distro that has a binary package, e.g. https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/matrix-syna...

[cjmoran]

Ah, I probably should've mentioned that the DigitalOcean article I linked shows how to install/configure a synapse binary with apt-get.