Thats a very fair point. My mistake was, that when I say “talk to each other”, my brain implicitly says “talk via text over messages”. Even then omemo is not universally supported yet, I think, so, encrypted messages can also be hit or miss.

But in OP’s case, this still kind of works, in the sense of, it doesn’t matter which instance of movim they and their friends are on, they will still be able to intercommunicate, right?

There are some misconceptions here, probably because your experience with the internet outside of these decentralised / federated services has taught you those.

1.) Servers are expected to be online 24x7. Clients can go offline and online as they please, but servers are always always always online. Otherwise very strange things start happening.

2.) Peer to peer stuff is generally speaking, somewhat brittle, because of the kinds of compromises it comes with.

3.) Signing up on an xmpp server managed by someone else is still not signing up to a centralised service. Its still just one node on the XMPP super network. Your friends can still sign up on some other server, and you can still talk to each other, with whatever clients you prefer.

There may still be a case to be made for installing movim on your own computers, but I’d say, go with the easy route and pick any movim instance from the link shared above.

This is maybe a bad idea: if you want reliable services, you need a hosting with some experience and reliability. You also want things to run on a real server, not your desktop. Servers are expected to be online 24x7, not only when you are awake. Also, AFAIK, bazzite is meant to be a desktop distro, not a server distro.

If you just want to enter the XMPP ecosystem, the answer is not necessarily self hosting: you could opt for one of many open sign up servers (for example, conversations.im).

You also dont need to self host movim, just pick any instance you want from https://join.movim.eu/ .

The beauty of XMPP is this: you can use any server, and any client, and you can talk to anyone connected to the larger XMPP network, even if they made different server/client choices than you did.

On the other hand, if your primary motivation is to learn, disregard all of the above. You learn by trying things and making errors and reading documentation and trying again, and reliability is a remote possibility that might come true (or might not) at the very end of your journey.