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A week in Matrix

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Re: A week in Matrix

#21

Post by solarkraft »

20k wrote: post #12
pkulak wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s Matrix. Matrix has spent too much time chasing Discord, with spaces, and group video chat, and email with federation. And too much time chasing Slack with threads. But everything you mentioned is core Matrix chat and works great on every client.

Matrix still doesn't have a client with built in push to talk as far as I'm aware. The relevant issue on the Element github has been sat there for 8 years now It does not seem like a serious project, at least not one being developed by folks who have user experience in mind

Same for multi-account support in Element Desktop. However: The new breed of clients (Element X) has this, along with many other improvements. This is probably what the happy user featured in the article was using. They recently (in the last few years) started to focus on UX, with what I would call some success.

Re: A week in Matrix

#22

Post by solarkraft »

Seeing such issues with Matrix and other open, common-good projects, I get the feeling like they just aren’t architected for good everyday-user UX.

Matrix is making real efforts to change this with Matrix 2.0, but still seems to suffer from design debt in many places.

I think this is partially due to the people they attract who largely work on the projects for free: Tinkerers who care about some form of technical elegance for the fun of it. I’ve had a few conversations around FOSS, including Matrix, at this point, and a not-too-uncommon response to my relayed criticisms was “then the user is wrong”.

I can’t tell them what to do. I could tell them what to do if they want adoption by normal people, but many don’t seem to be interested in that and you really can’t argue with that.

If adoption by normal people is a project goal, you have to seriously engineer for that. As much (partially fair) criticism as Gnome gets, they managed to build a desktop package that can seriously be used by normal people in the real world.

Re: A week in Matrix

#23

Post by broadsidepicnic »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #18

I host a matrix server and have three friends in it. One or all of them being unable to decrypt messages happens every few months and there’s no easy way to learn WHY do I reboot the server. Annoying, but the other chat apps have trade-offs I don’t care for.

I've hosted my own synapse since 2019, maybe even earlier. Its the same virtualized instance, all I've ever done is update it. Never had to reboot it other than due to updates.

Nothing in any logs?

Re: A week in Matrix

#24

Post by progval »

louiskottmann wrote: post #19

Remark half-way in the rant they are using dendrite, an experimental matrix server implementation that has been abandonned. Thus ranting about it is cheeky at best. I have been using synapse for years with little issue.

This is addressed two paragraphs later:

> Years ago, when the server was set up, choosing Dendrite seemed like a good decision

> Unfortunately, migrating between Matrix homeserver implementations remains a problem with no satisfying solution, so we're kind of stuck on slowly rotting foundations.

Re: A week in Matrix

#25

Post by JuniperMesos »

louiskottmann wrote: post #19

Remark half-way in the rant they are using dendrite, an experimental matrix server implementation that has been abandonned. Thus ranting about it is cheeky at best. I have been using synapse for years with little issue.

> Dendrite is kind of deprecated as a homeserver these days, at least it doesn't seem to be the main focus of development and most recent commits are mere dependency bumps. Years ago, when the server was set up, choosing Dendrite seemed like a good decision, because it was easier to deploy and maintain than Synapse and there was a promise for a bright future for the first 2nd generation homeserver implementation. Unfortunately, migrating between Matrix homeserver implementations remains a problem with no satisfying solution, so we're kind of stuck on slowly rotting foundations.

Dendrite may or may not have been a good choice for a Matrix homeserver at the time the decision to start it was made, years ago. But the real problem, as the blog post points out, is that there is no good way to change that decision. Migrating to a new homeserver implementation is equivalent to destroying the old server and creating a new one from scratch - which also has the implication that any user whose account was on the old server loses that account and has to create a new one, because Matrix user accounts are tied to some homeserver (a bad design decision, I think). Tying system identity to someone else's server - and that server's domain name - is the cardinal sin of federated identity systems, the ActivityPub ecosystem has exactly the same problem.

Re: A week in Matrix

#27

Post by teiferer »

solarkraft wrote: post #22

Seeing such issues with Matrix and other open, common-good projects, I get the feeling like they just aren’t architected for good everyday-user UX. Matrix is making real efforts to change this with Matrix 2.0, but still seems to suffer from design debt in many places. I think this is partially due to the people they attract who largely work on the projects for free: Tinkerers who care about some form of technical ele…

What you are writing may be true but what the article is about shows the exact opposite of "some form of technical elegance". This thing seems to be bug-ridden for feature areas off the mainstream usage path.

What helps against this are a rigorous design, testing, perhaps some formal methods sprinkled in (because distributed systems are really hard). That's what a tinkerer community could do that does not have an investor with strict timelines and profit requirements breathing down their neck. But the community apparently does not. At the least they should mark features as experimental that clearly have such fundamental issues.

Re: A week in Matrix

#28

Post by Almondsetat »

bronson wrote: post #3

I feel this. And it doesn't even cover the very first conversation I have with my users. "You want to install Element" "But I want Matrix." "They call it Element now." "I want to speak on Element?" "No you want to speak on Matrix using Element." "Uh." "Don't worry about it. Look, just install Element." "Well, I see Element and Element X." "Oh right. Well, do you want to video chat?" "What?" "Element X doesn't video c…

That's a strange conversation to have. Just compare it with email and they immediately get it

Re: A week in Matrix

#29

Post by Lerc »

I used to use Matrix. Its user experience was sub par, but in the end it rendered itself unusable to me before I had decided to abandon it of my own volition.

As far as I can tell it isn't so much a protocol as a collection of apps talking different protocols while claiming to use the same protocol.

Re: A week in Matrix

#30

Post by goodpoint »

fedpost wrote: post #5

Are there any real options in this space for something that is - E2EE - Large group capable (100+ users) - FOSS + self hostable - Not riddled with security issues - Relatively easy to use for iOS and Android users (safe for normies) I help run a Matrix server for people who are at risk from the current administration and I can attest to all of the issues mentioned plus a few more. I'd rather not move to something as…

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