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Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

conduit.rs

151–160 of 193 posts

Re: Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

#151

I’ve run a self-hosted Conduit instance for some years now. Pros: easy to install and use. Cons: it’s beta software! That said, it’s been really good for me. Reliable chat between my and a few friends, plus some big-ish rooms that I participate in. The author also works on Veloren[1]—another fun Rust project! [1]: https://veloren.net

> The author also works on Veloren That game is fucking cool. A couple years ago me and some friends compiled it for kicks and giggles to see what it was all about. To our surprise, the game ran silky smooth on my GTX 1050 Ti. We get into a lobby. We play for a half hour. We're just exploring (the map is barebones but has cool landmarks) when I realize that you can scroll to zoom out from your character. In a psychad…

From Veloren's home page:

"Veloren is a multiplayer voxel RPG written in Rust. It is inspired by games such as Cube World, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft."

I love how pointing out that it's written in Rust is more important that describing what the game is about or inspired by. Classic open source project unsure of who's the intended audience.

Re: Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

#152
post #138

I use Conduit with Element clients and from time to time I will have problems decrypting messages. Sometimed they'll stay unencrypted for a week. I only talk to people in a room on the official matrix.org server. They're all registered there. Does anyone else get that issue ever?

My (imperfect) understanding is that this is because of how end-to-end encryption works: you not only need to receive the messages (which are stored on the server, so you don't have to worry about them as you can retrieve them when you want), but also the keys to decrypt these messages (which are only stored on the clients, so whether or not they are available depends on you).

Possibly, one of your clients has the keys needed to decrypt one of the messages, but you're using another client which doesn't. Things go back to normal when both are connected at the same time and can share the keys, or when the client of the sender is connected and still has the keys.

If you don't keep your clients connected all the time, you can use a secure backup on the server, so the clients can retrieve the encrypted keys from the server and decrypt them locally.

Not having the keys happens more often if one the parties uses short-lived sessions (like logging exclusively in a private browser window, for example).

This article helped me with understanding a little: https://gerstner.it/2021/02/matrix-and-e2e-encryption-or-how...

Re: Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

#153
post #125
post #27

Can someone please explain, why use Matrix while there's XMPP ?

Because summaries like this still stand up as of today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998290 > XMPP is great for what it was designed for. It doesn't work well with mobile, high packet loss & high latency connections. XMPP is talkative and bandwidth intensive - bad for limited data/battery applications. It also wasn't designed for today's 1 person multiple devices reality. Most XMPP servers let you log in mul…

> It doesn't work well with mobile, high packet loss & high latency connections.

This is an absolutely false, baseless statement, mostly amounting to FUD. Messages work well on mobile, and they sync between devices just fine.

> Also, overload of XEPs doesn't help the ecosystem.

On the contrary, XEPs create the ecosystem. As I often say, Matrix is not a protocol, it's a product with an API created by a single organization.

Re: Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

#154
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author also works on Veloren That game is fucking cool. A couple years ago me and some friends compiled it for kicks and giggles to see what it was all about. To our surprise, the game ran silky smooth on my GTX 1050 Ti. We get into a lobby. We play for a half hour. We're just exploring (the map is barebones but has cool landmarks) when I realize that you can scroll to zoom out from your character. In a psychad…

From Veloren's home page: "Veloren is a multiplayer voxel RPG written in Rust. It is inspired by games such as Cube World, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft." I love how pointing out that it's written in Rust is more important that describing what the game is about or inspired by. Classic open source project unsure of who's the intended audience.

[deleted]

Re: Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

#155

On the topic of Matrix, does anyone know what causes messages to sometimes decrypt the last message until a new last message is sent (and fails to decrypt), or a single message to fail to decrypt while surrounding ones work successfully?

My understanding is still imperfect, but I'll try to provide some info:

Not all messages are encrypted with the same key, so if all of your clients are not connected at the same time, and the same is true for the sender, they can't exchange their keys. When that happens, each client can only decrypt the subset of the messages for which it has the keys. Also note that clients only exchange their keys with other verified clients.

If you look at the “session_id” attribute of the JSON source of the messages, you'll see that for a given session (ie. when the sender is logged in a client), all the messages are decrypted (which means you have the key for that session) or none of them are (which means you haven't received the key for that session yet).

Re: Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

#156
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because summaries like this still stand up as of today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998290 > XMPP is great for what it was designed for. It doesn't work well with mobile, high packet loss & high latency connections. XMPP is talkative and bandwidth intensive - bad for limited data/battery applications. It also wasn't designed for today's 1 person multiple devices reality. Most XMPP servers let you log in mul…

> It doesn't work well with mobile, high packet loss & high latency connections. This is an absolutely false, baseless statement, mostly amounting to FUD. Messages work well on mobile, and they sync between devices just fine. > Also, overload of XEPs doesn't help the ecosystem. On the contrary, XEPs create the ecosystem. As I often say, Matrix is not a protocol, it's a product with an API created by a single organiza…

I worked briefly on a mobile XMPP chat solution a few years ago, and considering this was when 3G was the best you could get and the application had to deal with some pretty bad connections, I don't remember XMPP having any intrinsic limitations like that.

Re: Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...assumes you know what Matrix is ... Matrix is a chat protocol. It works like chatting over GIT (distributed databases) and is more like a team messenger like Mattermost or Zulip. Conduit is a server software and not for end users. More information about Matrix: https://www.freie-messenger.de/en/matrix

> and is more like a team messenger like Mattermost or Zulip. if at all, Element is this. Matrix doesn't really care about what type of users the clients target

And that is my point. While I use Matrix, it is confusing by itself as you need the client, which was hosted as riot.im, now element, etc. For a newcomer this page is just as confusing whle it could be a great entry as it being so lightweight compared to the actual Matrix server. Some additional notes will help a lot.

Re: Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the previous link, but conduit.rs has a Link called "Documentation" at the top of the page. Installation is downloading a binary, setting up autostart and writing/copying a 10 line configuration.toml.

You're not understanding. The parent commenter said that the link was showing lots of installation options, but the link does not show that. I know there are installation instructions elsewhere, but I was just responding to what the parent was claiming about this link.

Oh right. Thank you, that went over my head.

Re: Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

#159

Hello, I'm Timo and I started the Conduit project a few years ago. Feel free to ask some questions.

Timo,

Thank you and kudos for all of your hard work on this. I will definitely be checking your project out. :)

-sydbarrett74

Re: Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

#160
post #27

Can someone please explain, why use Matrix while there's XMPP ?

Isn't xmpp old style instant messaging? As in, if you miss a message because you had poor connection or the application wasn't running then it's gone? Matrix does not work this way.

That was true 20 years ago. For the past 10+ years XMPP has had Stream Resumption that allows you to resume a few stanzas you missed recently (typically with a poor connection), and Message Archive Management that stores everything on the server that you can then retrieve on the client.

XMPP has had little place on the public stage, but that doesn't mean it stopped evolving.

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