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Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is like saying “i tried the web, and it’s extremely slow”. what server were you using? and which client on which platform?
How about slow compared to Discord?
Incidentally I tried matrix for the first time on the basis of someone recommending it here in HN, and it's extremely slow
this is like saying “i tried the web, and it’s extremely slow”. what server were you using? and which client on which platform?
> Linux, x86_64. Getting the same behavior across distros and installations.
It is still very much the case. To emphasize, we have for the past couple of years used Matrix routinely on:
* Multiple client implementations
* Multiple OSs (Linux/Android/iOS)
* Multiple accounts and profiles
* Multiple Linux distros, desktop environments, window managers, X11/Wayland, CPU architectures (x86_64, aarch64)
* Private and public homeservers
The common denominator seems to be that the account with many (thousands) of rooms (almost all of which fully historical/archived with no ongoing activity apart from participants presence) consistently gets Element freeze, hang, be extremely slow.
This makes element-desktop practically unusable for that account. Other accounts in the exact same environment do not have this issue. Signing in to a fresh profile seems to improve this, for a while, until it starts happening again
The same issue does not appear on Element iOS/Android, or with other accounts on the same client.
It gets more annoying by the fact that even under normal operations it's slow enough to start up that it can take some time to tell if this time it'll eventually resolve by waiting or if it needs to be force-killed and restarted. This is also the case on an otherwise idle 8-core Ryzen3 with 64GB of RAM and fast NVMe drive sitting close to its homeserver on a 1GBps link. (The slowness seems to be all or mostly locally in Element - even when in a mostly empty room, it can take a very long time expanding/collapsing/navigating the People/Rooms sidebar. This, too, only for those particular high-room accounts and only on element-desktop)
For a while we believed it could have been the same cause as this issue[0] but alas, 1.11.0 with Electron 19 has not resolved it.
The common factors that consistently exhibits this behavior seems to be Linux, element-desktop, account with large amount of rooms. Been like this for a while now.
Incidentally I tried matrix for the first time on the basis of someone recommending it here in HN, and it's extremely slow
When joining huge chat rooms like some of those on the matrix.org homeserver, it can take a bit for the clients to sync up and get going. Performance is getting improved all the time, especially in terms of quickly joining a room. Latency also doesn't help, the protocol requires loads of round trips for the JSON payloads to go back and forth, so if you're not near your homeserver you're going to see some annoying problems.
I recommend giving the platform another quick try using https://app.cinny.in/ which to me feels very Discord-like in terms of snappiness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about slow compared to Discord?
But this still doesn't answer the question - did you register on the default server that everyone uses (matrix.org)? And in that case, you've given the exact worse case scenario: The heaviest server, being used by everyone else, with massive rooms, and constantly fighting off spam.
I've tried to join the main matrix chat room (#matrix:matrix.org) but my poor homeserver just couldn't handle it.
I'm not familiar with pricing in this space, but $3.80 / MAU (says $3 for element product, then 0.80 for the chatterbox product on top) seems really expensive that you would have very specific use-cases (government, hospitals?) to use the product to want to pay the price for it.
We’ll see how the pricing fares in practice.
How does E2EE work here? How can the user know their communication isn't being intercepted?
It’s using normal Matrix olm/megolm double ratchet encryption. To track the identity of who you’re talking to we can do TOFU and/or normal out of band Matrix verification as per https://github.com/vector-im/hydrogen-web/issues/518 - but this isn’t yet exposed in Chatterbox. We’ll get it added, as without verification you obviously can’t spot a MITM.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But this still doesn't answer the question - did you register on the default server that everyone uses (matrix.org)? And in that case, you've given the exact worse case scenario: The heaviest server, being used by everyone else, with massive rooms, and constantly fighting off spam.
Personally, I find that the Matrix.org server is much better for large rooms. Most of the content is already cached on the server by all the other accounts on there, so joining large rooms takes seconds instead of minutes. Modern sync (v3 already, I think?) also helps a huge amount but it needs client and server support. I've tried to join the main matrix chat room (#matrix:matrix.org) but my poor homeserver just cou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s using normal Matrix olm/megolm double ratchet encryption. To track the identity of who you’re talking to we can do TOFU and/or normal out of band Matrix verification as per https://github.com/vector-im/hydrogen-web/issues/518 - but this isn’t yet exposed in Chatterbox. We’ll get it added, as without verification you obviously can’t spot a MITM.
How does the user check that, if they are running untrusted clients embedded on untrusted sites? Who is the adversary that the addition of end-to-end encryption is supposed to defeat?
Edit: sorry I should have clarified that I was answering your second question. As for the first question, the user still has to trust the business to a certain extent
Incidentally I tried matrix for the first time on the basis of someone recommending it here in HN, and it's extremely slow
I'm running it on my own server and performance is quite acceptable. Picking the right client is very important, though; Element isn't always the fastest, and I find Cinny's UX to be much better for general chat, which is clearly very much… inspired by Discord. On the other hand, Element is ahead in terms of features and protocol support (like the (live) location sharing feature), but Fluffychat has the superior mobi…