cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/8083028
And no IPad version to
I think you can use the web version
i think its kinda like discord, where the desktop app is just the web app, except it has more stuff for no reason(“no reason” meaning they can collect more info about ur pc)
They don’t want you to have as much control as a browser, a browser that sandboxes your private data and limit how much they can annoy you
In a day where electron is the main way one makes such apps, no, it is not.
To be fair, Signal, Threema and Discord use Electron, and therefore are just crappy bullshit on Wayland.
Using a dedicated FF instance uses less RAM, CPU and disk space, and gives you more control over the application/website.
Discord has a web version, even if it doesn’t support some features, so I use it in FF. WhatsApp has a web version, so I use it in FF.
Signal does not. So it’s barely usable on my Nvidia desktop.
We do not need ““native”” Applications, made with a mix of a web version and a D tier browser engine, if we could just use the already installed, better and perfectly working browser.
- Discords Electron was outdated and vulnerable for years, FF would be patched in days or hours in case of a zero day.
- Electron uses much more resources than FF. Because every company thinks they need a custom version of electron, every app brings its own bloaty electron environment, despite there being a system one.
- Electron/Chromium is extremely buggy on Wayland + Nvidia, to the point I cannot use Spotify, Discord or Steam correctly.
Can we have electron, but based on gecko and unable to ship its own gecko?
Discord on Xorg is a mess too. It’s not even the electron part, the app itself is really bad.
Not only it’s inefficient, but (at least in Arch) it doesn’t auto update on big versions. And instead of just warning you, it refuses to start until you manually install the new update. And god forbid if the package mantainers need a day or two to update the package, because until then you can’t use it.
The funniest thing is, there’s a file in the app’s directory called “build_info.json” which contains the version number, and with a simple edit you can make it think it’s updated, and it suddenly works without problem.
I really don’t know what they’re updating, but I have a version from 2021 running on my phone (it’s old and the new app is really slow), and it still works fine. Even after the account handle change and several other additions to the app.
Oh, and for the Arch users: there’s a discord version on the AUR called “discord-canary-electron-bin” that uses system wide electron, so it should be updated faster than discord’s own bundled electron. I don’t know if there’s a non canary version of it, tho.
Switched to Matrix pretty recently, and it’s been surprisingly nice to use
I heard XMPP is better though. Servers are way less hard on resources, its way simpler and just as secure. Decentralization, you can share all sorts of files and all, but video calls are simply done by another provider like Jitsi
I am using both for enough long time,mutlidevice synchronization it’s nightmare in xmpp,also usual xmpp isplaintext.So when u wanna use encryptions like omemo so far not always guaranteed that ur encryption key will be delivered to ur new device which u connected.Also u cannot control sessions.So if u would be hacked u would not be notified,and u don’t have ability to kick out this dude session.But yes xmpp more light about resources and works faster for now.
Thanks for the info!
Yeah sessions should be controlled but are a pretty modern feature. Simply using strong passwords or even hardare OTP would be great. But for sure, a downside.
Transferring private keys is interesting, this is pretty userul, true. signal to this day does not work here for me, so I prefer using it as a messenger, for temporary things. Afaik my matrix experience was better here.
and just as secure
The base procotol doesn’t have E2EE. You can do E2EE still but something to keep in mind.
This is true, since the base protocol is dead simple without many frills since its goals is real-time communications, not a chat-specific protocol for humans (TLS is good enough for certain applications of the protocol). That said, most modern clients support PGP & OMEMO with many having the encryption on by default and required is usually an option as well. There were some talks about simplifying the OMEMO setup in the future, but it’s good enough for now. See Are we OMEMO yet? for client suggestions.
Fuck monopolies
b e e p e r
seriously best thing ever. even allows iMessage on Android. combines pretty much everything you just said into one app on all platforms.
iMessage on android as in android users would have blue bubbles on someone’s iPhone?
If that’s the case then it’s relaying the messages through an iMac or Mac mini somewhere which would require signing into an Apple ID so some third party would have access to all of your chats 💀💀💀
Basically what nothing phone is doing now
Can someone explain to me whats the deal with blue bubbles? I live in a country where Apple has 10% market share on mobile phones so I never heard about them
If I can make an estimated guess, and this might very well be completely wrong, I’m guessing if iphone devices text each other the chats appear in blue bubbles implying it’s end to end encrypted and secure. If they use imessage to contact a non apple user it will probably be in green and not be E2EE ( regular text message ).
