Oh look, the version number match the number of users. ;)
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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Could someone smarter than me explain Matrix to me? In particular,
- What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?
- What advantage would it give me over other services?
- Is Matrix anything good already, or is it something with potential that's still fully in development?
- How tech savvy does one need to be to use Matrix?
matrix is for chat rooms full of strangers. signal is for talking to your friends
- What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?
None? Use signal, as long as it works. If the Signal server goes down tho, you could selfhost Matrix.
What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?
Matrix is more like discord, no phone numbers, just email, and you can make big groups with different channels within. More meant for communities then something like Signal, that's mostly for 1:1 conversation or small groups
What advantage would it give me over other services? Keeping the discord example i said above, no tracking, possibility to have end to end encryption, and open source code, along with the ability of having different instances that can communicate to each other, just like here on lemmy, so if you don't trust anyone else you can run your own instance
Is Matrix anything good already, or is it something with potential that's still fully in development?
It's mostly good already, but as with many other privacy focused services it lacks a wide adoption, so most of the communities there are about privacy, Linux and that type of stuff.
How tech savvy does one need to be to use Matrix?
The most used client, Element, is IMO very easy to use, you can directly register through there, and you get the choice of choosing between the official matrix.org instance (which on certain occasions is laggy due to the many people using it), or other instances
What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?
Your organization can't host a federated Signal server, and email isn't private.
Is Matrix anything good already, or is it something with potential that's still fully in development?
My previous organization has used it for over 4 years without issues, however mostly limited to text.
How tech savvy does one need to be to use Matrix?
Simply using? Not very much, basically like Lemmy.
I would like to enter the Matrix.
Epic timing, I want to dive in and see if I can mirror setting up Discord communities in the most painless way possible. This seems to be a great step in the right direction. Imagine a place.. where you get the best of both worlds and we can leave Discord behind.
i guess they'll actually be done Summer next year
If the Matrix Foundation can deliver on all the points of this blog post then Matrix will take off as a platform. The problem I have is that in the past they've been poor at handling issues in any sort of reasonable time frame, or at all.
Hoping they'll eventually turn over a new leaf.
Is it an improvement over xmpp ?
I need to give Matrix another try
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.
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
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
Isn't telegram a for-profit company?
The telegram apps are open source
Great because I hated matrix 1, hopefully two will be better
Do you like fight scenes on moving cars?
I loved the one with downloading martial arts directly into your brain
But I haven’t even escaped the original matrix. Or the matrix reloaded.
You're not the chosen one.
That's what she said.
I interviewed with them and wanted to work for them. They said I wanted too much money :(
How much did you ask for?
I asked for an American tech worker salary, and they’re British so they thought it was preposterous
Oh
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 is it?
I like this reddit comment's explanation:
As someone said before, compare it to E-Mail.
Matrix ~ smtp/pop3/imap (protocol layer)
synapse ~ sendmail/postfix/dovecot/exchange/... (server)
element, fluffy, ... ~ thunderbird, outlook, pine, elm, ... (clients)
Everyone can host it's own server and have it's on private chat cloud. Thats like E-Mail and other opensource chat servers like Rocket.Chat, Mattermost and so on.
But like for E-Mail, it is easy possible to federate with others (like mail: "talk" to other mailservers), to be able to chat with people on other Matrix Servers. That's the difference to most of the other opensource chat.servers, which are stuck to their cloud.
As for EMail: Choose your best weapon, will say, client or server software. The protocol is free and will stay free. At this time, there's mainly synapse as the reference implementation from matrix.org and upcoming dendrite, but more servers will be available in future I think. At client side, theres element as the reference implementation and also some others, for example fluffy.chat.
Another cool feature ist bridging. The protocol specification allows bridges to other chat-systems, so you are for example able to talk to IRC-Servers or XMPP-Servers too. Many bridges are in development, less are stable. But more to come in future.
Matrix.org is "outsourced" from university and responsble for developing the specs. They are the big brain behind. They also server matrix.org as free service for people to test matrix or use it without having their own servers.
Element.io is also an outsourced company, which is developing element (reference clients). They are also selling hosted solutions to get money to the project.
Both are under the roof of the new Vector limited.
Because the Api is free, everyone can produce own servers an clients and (in theory) no one can take the whole network over. (in practice: if a big company does its own "cool" non open addons and has enough users, the same shit as for xmpp and WhatsApp could happen...)
Because everyone can host its own servers *and* optionally federate, the same product can be used for high secure private chat-clouds, for example in hostpital, military, schools, whatever, but it can also be uses to talk everyone like e-mail or phone. *And* no one has the masterhost, so no one has all data and no one can change the rules overnight to get money, more data or whatever.
From functional side: Matrix is what some people call "modern", it has text chat, you can send files, you can do voice- and video-calls (in element: 1:1, for groups with jisi as backend) and send voice-messages (at least in fluffy.chat, upcoming in element also). You can also plugin things like etherpad or BigBluButton and send cute stickers if needed. You can structure your contacts with "spaces" (beta).
Element got better and better in the last year and is imho very easy to use for now, but with some last edges. Fluffy is somewhat easier some users as far as I've heared but not feature complete.
I hope, Matrix will be the E-Mail-Version of Chat in the future. I have reviewed some systems for my university and it was the only one from which I think it has the potential to do so. So, give it a try. It's great.
Also on niche side because it's a realtime encrypted data server you can also use it for transferring ANY realtime data, such as games and VR (see https://thirdroom.io/landing).
It really sets it apart to other federated systems like ActivityPub, or email to me, which those systems are better for eventually consistent data federation.
It’s been here since 2003
i'm guessing they'll actually be done in 6 months or so
I laughed a bit. Thanks.
great project getting better all the time!
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.
they do have a special crypto usage which they have sensibly rewritten in Matrix 2.0
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.
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.
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.
So you were aware that this announcement includes fixes for the encryption issues, yet you decided to post a comment complaining about them anyway, ignoring the point of this post and giving readers the false impression that the issues are unaddressed.
And you did it just to contradict someone who finds the project useful.
That's not helpful to anyone. Quite the opposite, I'd say.
I replied to an answer here. Not to the blog post.
By that, I referred to the quality of this answer concerning the past, to be more precise to the last three years, we‘ve been using Matrix at work, struggeling with these shortcomings.
Your personal shortcomings concerning either the use of Lemmy and/or discussions in general are sad, but not my problem.
Too much in the open source community is people saying this is great! Always has been. You shouldn't crap on people being honest about the problems that have existed, because track record is important