Nextcloud, Qbittorrent, Truenas and loads of other svcs take optional email credentials for sending alerts and other features (eg. password recovery for nextcloud).
What email providers do people usually use to make this process simple to set up? For example, Microsoft doesn’t allow basic auth anymore so it’s supposedly not possible to use via most of these setups, and some other services seem like they have a low inbox size (does this matter?)
None of the alternatives are as standardized as plain old email. You can use whatever you like to read them, you don’t have to rely on a single company like Meta with WhatsApp for communication, it’s easy to use, pretty damn reliable and fault resistant and just ticks all the boxes you’ll ever need for a simple message delivery.
Personally I would absolutely hate if software started to offer notifications only on slack or signal or whatever. Just let me have my email and I can then read it with a browser in library, on my cellphone, on my desktop and laptop and on pretty much every other internet connected device on the planet. And if I want, I can pass that trough to teams, sms, all the messaging platforms and even straight to my printer should I need to. With other message delivery options that’s often either pretty difficult or straight up impossible.
Unfortunately not when you’re self hosting… Can’t rely on it when you’re supposed to receive an email (account validation, reset password email,…) which never arrives and you’re stuck clicking on « resend the email » on the website with no hope…
I meant that the technology itself is reliable. And you can do self hosting just fine too, I’ve been doing it since 2010 or so, but running a local smarthost which sends messages via reputable SMTP provider works just fine too. Or even directly interacting with the SMTP provider from all the applications you’re running.
Decentralization is not a concept that is reserved for SMTP
No one suggested such a thing. I suggested several other alternatives that aren’t reliant on any particular company or service, and are easier to run and manage without requiring approval from your ISP or whatever else.
With other options you wouldn’t need to because they already provide the features you’re looking for in those apps.
What other than email provides that? Browser notifications generally don’t work on mobile. Most of the common instant messengers rely on a single instance running the thing if you’re not suggesting sending messages via IRC or XMPP (or matrix or…) which have their own problems. App notifications require that you have the thing which app is running to be available and online and they more often that not require some spesific device. Also even if you had linux desktop “app” it requires that the software is running.
Also I have not met an ISP which would block sending email via gmail/amazon/protonmail/whoever. Sure, my current ISP blocks tcp/25 to the world by default, but you can request to open that too if you really want to and ports 587 and 465 are open, so you can work around that if you don’t want a smarthost for some reason.
Which other protocol allows notifications at the same time on all the mobile devices, all the workstations and allow easy way to send the very same message to arbitary amount of recipients to all of their devices? I had email on a palm pilot device at 2001 or so, over mobile data with IRDA and you can read email even with Commodore 64 if you really want to (well, to be more spesific, use C=64 as an terminal for *nix server to access email, I think there’s no actual IMAP/POP client for it). There’s just no way for any other modern service to even try to compete with versatility with email.
And then there’s the more sopisthicated approaches like pushing email trough however complex procmail/perl/python/whatever scripting you like where you can develop quite literally whatever you can imagine. Set up a old fire alarm bell, hook it up to your home automation, process incoming emails and if it’s severe enough turn the bell on. Sure, at least a some of that is possible via instant messengers too, but with email I can be pretty sure that if I write a script today for it it’ll still run quite happily for the next 10-15 years.
Please do tell me which of the modern messaging alternatives offer all of that.
Matrix? For one?
…of course they do?
Among others. Email has much bigger problems.
I have no idea what any of that means…
Which makes no difference when self-hosting…
See above.
I…don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. You want to argue that email is superior because it’s old? You can run a Mastodon server on a Commodore as well.
Yes? There are a hundred ways.
…why wouldn’t you just send the signal directly to the server?
That checks out. You conveniently skipped the part where I requested a single messaging solution which works with either modern android/ios devices or with anything you’ll find in your dad’s(or grandads I guess) drawer, can manage multiple recipients, escalations to sms/home automation bells, works reliably even if the uplink goes down for few hours and so on.
And no, you very much can not run mastodon server on a Commodore 64.
But you seem like a young and enthustiatic individual. I was one “a few” years ago. Keep it going, but that arrogant attitude won’t get you anywhere. Email has been a thing since the 1970s and there’s a reason why it’s still going strong. Things like XMPP has been around for a good while and there’s a reason why they’re not even close of overtaking email as a primary communication technology around.
You’ll live and learn. My guess is that when you reach my age, email is still working just fine and majority of the hot stuff which is around right now has faded to the history.
I didn’t skip anything. The solutions I listed support all of that, with the possible exception of running on old shit which…why is that even remotely relevant?
You absolutely can. There’s an entire community dedicated to running Mastodon servers on old hardware.
Is it ignorant old farts refusing to embrace new technology?
Because it came around after email and all the old farts were too committed to it to learn something new? Is it because tech oligarchs learned from their lessons and embraced, extended, exploited, and abandoned open standards? What is the reason? You tell me.
It doesn’t work “just fine”, it’s fucking awful. Outside of trying to host it, just using it is a nightmare. Trying to find any information is a nightmare because there’s no common communication thread, and the emails are chock full of unnecessary bloat, and everyone has a fucking signature that’s a mile long and full of giant images. You can’t send videos. There’s a bunch of tracking features built into it. It’s insecure. Like, the list goes on…
Ok. Send me the link of disk image of that. I have C64 laying around with 1541 disk drive. I’ll set up a public mastodon instance running on a C64 with a webcam stream of the setup.
I don’t know where to find that information. I’ve just seen it running.
Commodore 64 is a home computer released at 1982. Modern expansions for it allows the thing to actually have tcp/ip stack and it can run things like telnet, but your single mastodon server, in comparison of what was available in 1980s, is pretty much equal of the whole bandwidth and storage of the internet (or arpanet, depending on how you want to time things).
Mastodon server requires (roughly) at least 2 gigabytes of memory and 20 gigabytes of storage. And with that it needs at least dual core 2GHz CPU to run it.
Commodore 64 had 1Mhz. A million hertz sounds like a big number, but we’re talking (at minimum) of two processor cores running with 2000 million hertz. Also, C=64 had 64 000 bytes of memory while the absolute minimum to run mastodon instance is 2 000 000 000 bytes.
And then there’s the storage. Your minimum mastodon instance should have at least 20GB of storage. 1541 used 5,25" floppy disks which could store up to 170 kilobytes. So you’d need someone to change disks as needed on a over 400 meter tall tower of floppy disks.
So, please tell me again where to get disk images to run mastodon server on a C=64 and how you just know that plain old email is garbage and old people just don’t know what they’re talking about.