It’s been here since 2003
Hopefully the clients get much better. I convinced a few friends to get on Matrix last year… and… boy… it was a terrible experience. Everyone ended up going back to Discord and they probably won’t trust another recommendation from me.
UX is very difficult, unfortunately, especially for open-source projects where the contributors are usually programmers and not so much UX/product managers.
Look at the telegram client, which is open source and has the best UX for a messenger I know
I’ve been very mindful not to recommend Matrix until the clients and protocol become much more stable. When you’re recommending platforms to average users you really need to jump in and try it yourself. If too many problems come up just don’t recommend. Or alternatively do recommend if you want them to leave you alone :3
great project getting better all the time!
Encryption is a mess with Matrix. Randomly doesn‘t decrypt messages. Most non-techies don‘t get the process of saving key files or creating secure passphrases.
Looks like someone didn’t read the article. See part 4: Invisible Encryption. (Also note the Conclusion paragraph that explains the new functionality is only just starting to appear in clients.)
I did. I referred to the current version and the comment that is has always been a great project.
Honestly in my experience all issues with decryption have been solved for more than a year. No matter if im using android, web or desktop. Idk about apple shit but thats just not a priority probably.
Todays desktop release finally enables the new voice/video calls/rooms feature which was the last serious complaint i had.
Awful to self-host (resources, administration) and rolling their own crypto
On the UX-Side it’s too complicated to explain to my parents.
I’d love for it to succeed, but for now I’ll just stick woth Signal
rolling their own crypto
No, it uses well-known, well-proven, standard crypto.
It also uses double-ratchet key management, much like what Signal does.
The reference server is a bit heavy if you’re federating with large public rooms, but lighter alternative servers are available.
But I haven’t even escaped the original matrix. Or the matrix reloaded.
I tried running a matrix server last year. I guess I will try again and see if a normie like me can make it somewhat usable.
With docker it’s quite easy (assuming you are familiar with docker)
But docker / containerization is a skill that becomes really really helpful to learn if you are interested in this type of thing.
What was difficult was the constant security checks, it happened like every time I changed devices and occasionally things were encrypted and unable to be read, it felt totally unusable. It’s true that I don’t quite get docker, I have a few services that run on dcker, but most of them run straight on arch. Yes I know arch isn’t ideal for servers, I’ll fix it next summer during school break
