If this is so convenient, why wasn’t it made a part of a newer C standard?

Not OP, but what I do lack here is a decent server Implementation in a single binary and easy deployment.

Also decent native clients for various platforms. Do we have any good ones?

This probably isn’t a xmpp specific, but I’d like to have it work like wireguard. If the keys are wrong, self hosted instance would just reject it on the packet level. Then only authorized clients could use it. Outgoing connection on some hub instance would give access to outside world. All this would help with self hosting.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Don’t know how to help you with those vdi problems, but here is an out of the box thinking: tell him to ask a neighbor.

I have a similar situation so i got a hetzner VM and set up wireguard connections from both ends, so that vm serves as a hub/router. Then you can just ssh into the machine via vpn and do an update, upgrade or whatever.

If you stick with Ubuntu lts, it will require very little maintenance.