TIL there is an fediverse alternative to Discord

About Matrix Matrix is an open protocol for decentralised, secure communications.

Matrix Manifesto We believe:

People should have full control over their own communication. People should not be locked into centralised communication silos, but instead be free to pick who they choose to host their communication without limiting who they can reach. The ability to converse securely and privately is a basic human right. Communication should be available to everyone as a free and open, unencumbered, standard and global network.

Rokin,

I like Matrix but it’s far from Discord right now

Silkscreen,

The good thing is that Discord is actually kinda bad when compared to Guilded and Slack. It won’t be hard to catch up to Discord, since most of the features they add are fluff and not really needed.

What we need are the more robust features that Guilded has.

half,
@half@lemmy.world avatar

That’s a good thing. Discord is chugging its way through the last half of the Web 2.0 service to social media pipeline. It’s a VC-funded multimedia enterprise extended around a novel technology core optimized for its original service offering, real-time voice/text. Nobody is immune to bloat, but because Matrix is a protocol standard, not an app, users have the option of sticking with minimal clients and servers that won’t (necessarily) get destroyed by feature creep.

If you’ve tried Element and thought “ah, slow Discord,” maybe have a scroll through matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/. I don’t want to get off topic but all my favorite software is standard/specification-based.

randint,

I don’t think Matrix feels slow because the app is slow. In my experience, I have tried 3 homeservers (community.rs, matrix.im, and mozilla.org (hosted by modular), and there was a really really big performance gap. I’m not gonna say which one is which, but sending message on one (the time between you hit send and the circled checkmark appears) usually takes less than 1 seconds, another averages at maybe 1.5 seconds, the other often takes more than 5 seconds. Choosing a performant homeserver could really impact your experience with Matrix, and it’s sad that people can’t really know how performant a server is unless they create an account on it and try it out themselves.

ninchuka,

it also depends on the size of rooms your sending messages in

Xttweaponttx,

Yeah man so true. Matter of time before somehow we have to but loot crates to earn minutes

Rodeo,

I loved Discord back in 2015/2016. I hate it now.

Anomalous_Llama,

Me and my boys have been using discord for years now to chat while we game and maybe stream what we’re doing just to each other.

Discord has added features and shit I suppose but I haven’t changed how I use it at all since I first started.

Rodeo,

Part of the reason I hate it now is they refuse to support Linux. In fact their support in general is pretty crappy.

kameecoding,

I mean I am not a fan of discord, but it’s just an Electron app, like Spotify, isn’t it? meaning you can just open it in a browser you probably have running anyways

JusnJusn,

I got Discord installed on Ubuntu just fine, what doesn’t work about it?

MrShelbySan,

It works but they won’t provide support if it breaks. There was a bug with screen sharing sound on Linux (and maybe macOS as well?) for a LONG time, like years, before it was eventually fixed.

On macOS they also took their sweet ass time with the Apple Silicon version, when the regular version was broken as hell on the shiny new M1 Macs.

They only really care about « gAmERs » which to then means Windows.

apprehensively_human,

There was a bug with screen sharing sound on Linux (and maybe macOS as well?) for a LONG time, like years, before it was eventually fixed.

Wait, this was fixed? I haven’t been bothering with screen sharing because I thought this was still an issue.

MrShelbySan,

Last time I checked it was. I don’t know if a new bug was introduced since however.

Rodeo,

On top of what the other guy said, it just doesn’t behave like a Linux app. It doesn’t respect the package manager, if there’s a new version but the package hasn’t been updated yet, the app just refuses to launch. Like the developers literally won’t even let you use the app if it’s not the current version.

It’s also a electron app, so it doesn’t respect the window manager either. It has to have it’s own special window decorations that don’t match, and when I used i3 (tiling window manager) it was very difficult to get it to work normally in my setup like every other app did with no effort.

Finally, it asks for super user access! Why in the name of unholy fuck is a userland app demanding administrative powers on my computer?

JusnJusn,

Funny you say that, I actually just noticed that today. I tried launching it and it refused to let me use it until I updated. It was super annoying.

PlexSheep,

Matrix isn’t the alternative for discord. Others have been named.

Matrix is a chat with a high regard for encryption, more an alternative to Whatsapp and signal then discord.

red,

Matrix is the federated alternative to XMPP and IRC first and foremost, imho

ninchuka, (edited )

Well xmpp is federated, it’s just slightly more centralised then matrix since if a server goes down the room/muc made on that server goes down as well

generic_lemmy_user,

Matris does not use E2E encryption for most channels. Its primary draw is federation, not security or anonymity.

vext01,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

It makes no sense to encrypt public channels.

ninchuka,

There’s 0 point to encryption on public rooms

themoonisacheese,
@themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works avatar

Matrix is considerably more like discord than both Whatsapp or signal.

You can get a WhatsApp/signal experience out of it but overall it is very similar to discord

randint,

Yeah it is more similar to discord. If I were to group chatting apps/services into two groups, I would do this:

  • WhatsApp, Signal, Line, Messenger, Telegram, SMS
  • Discord, irc, Matrix
shadowbert,
shadowbert avatar

I don't see anything mentioned about calls... kind've a big part of discord.

Is it supported?

MentalEdge,
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz avatar

Yes. There is voip. Also video and screen sharing.

Both could work better, but they’re there, if the client you’re using supports them.

Secret300,

Wait since when. I’ve been waiting for VoIP. I am on Cinny tho so that might be why. The changed the way elements works on linux and it’s so cancer to use now

manwichmakesameal,

This is also dependent on who is running the server and how it’s set up. If it’s the matrix.org you’re using, I couldn’t tell you. If it’s someone hosting/you’re self-hosting, you need a STUN server for traversing NAT. It’s not part of the default Synapse docker install and I’m not sure about non-docker installs.

ninchuka,

I think cinny is waiting to implement voip when group calls get merged into the spec, currently group calls are done via jitsi

CrypticCoffee,

I would agree with this. Purpose of the application rather than technical implementation defines its use. Though it can do many things Signal and WA also do

Kiruko,

I too am wondering what makes you say that. What is it missing?

vin,

Voice Channels would be a start. Game Streaming is another use-case of Discord my friend group uses which is missing.

themoonisacheese,
@themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works avatar

Matrix has voice chat and screen sharing. I don’t think it implements audio passthrough like discord but I could be mistaken.

Secret300,

I thought it only had voice chat for calls? Are there voice channels tho?

ninchuka,

not yet, they are working on a native group calls stack, so once thats done and stable there will be voice channels in element and other clients

flop,

There is a jitsi widget for rooms though, so you can convert any group chat into a drop in/drop out voice room similar to discord’s voice rooms. The biggest struggle I have with it is that it defaults to asking about video every time, and there is no hotkey support. 🤮

ninchuka,

my friend has used signal, whatsapp, discord bridges with her conduit server and has had 0 issues

flop,

That does sound rad. Mostly my point was just about not having push-to-talk or toggle mute in the jitsi plug in, but I am far from deep on what can be done with the matrix protocol.

ninchuka,

Somehow I sent that in reply to that message instead of another one, but element call will have push to talk in fairly certain and a walkie talkie mode where you press the button to talk

Fuzzypyro,

I would say it’s a lot more than discord. Putting it that way doesn’t give it as much credit as it deserves. My favorite out of the laundry list of features and benefits is that you can synchronize your messaging across all platforms into a single interoperable client if your choosing. You can use a better standard while not having to bug others to switch.

d3Xt3r,

But does it have activity detection and screen sharing?

linearchaos,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

If you delve the bridges available, some support activity, some do not

KLISHDFSDF,
@KLISHDFSDF@lemmy.ml avatar

Try Mirotalk when you need simple screen sharing. It uses browser based tech so no server/app/plugin required. p2p.mirotalk.com

MentalEdge,
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz avatar

Element does have screen sharing.

xaxl,

People say this but there are a few features, particularly robust voice chat, that it could use before any kind of mass adoption will happen.

ssorbom,

It integrates with jitsi, which is a fairly good tried and proven solution. Meanwhile, The matrix developers are working on their own implementation of voice and video that plays a bit nicer with their room permission system. For one to one conversations, there is a turn-based solution for voice and video.

xaxl,

own implementation of voice and video

This is what I’m referring to and am looking forward to trying it out once it’s ready.

linearchaos,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

I just had to go and look this up to get more details

matrix.org/ecosystem/bridges/

Looks like you need to be hosting your own server, then you can install plugins for separate services. Very cool…

I’d love to tie together a few different systems I’m using but I worry that the bridges will break every time a platform does an update

Have long have you been using it? How’s your experience been? What bridges are you using?

fmstrat,

You don’t have to host your own, just join an instance with bridges. That being said, running your own is easy and nice with docker, including the bridges.

cousinofjah,
@cousinofjah@lemmy.world avatar

Where would be a good starting point to check out a list of instances with these bridges? And how safe are they?

randint,

By the way, if you join an instance without these bridges, you could always search for bridges on other servers

GlowingLantern,

If you want to use a paid service from the developers, there’s Element One: https://element.io/element-one

cousinofjah,
@cousinofjah@lemmy.world avatar

hmm, I wonder if there’s a way for me to host my own matrix server and do the bridging myself, like a docker container or something.

GlowingLantern,

There’s an Ansible playbook that allows you to install everything easily, but I don’t know how difficult the maintenance is. It’s definitely possible to self-host Matrix with bridges.

eco_game,

They actually link to a guide right on their website: github.com/beeper/self-host

The beeper client only works with the official beeper services, but you can use other apps like Element and FluffyChat with your own server.

Pika,
@Pika@lemmy.world avatar

this is why I never got into matrix. I don’t actually know how lol, the page doesn’t list servers available and i don’t really want to just spin up my own just for myself

yamasaur,

Sign up for beeper and all the hosting is done for you

linearchaos,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

sadly they’re on restricted signup

randint,

Well, due to the nature of the Fediverse, no one can reliably list all the server in existence. They can merely list the most popular ones, much like how you can’t list all the Lemmy instances. A list I used to pick my server is joinmatrix.org/servers/ , though you might want to look up the server’s reputation before joining. Please do check it out! I believe that someone on Lemmy has a much higher probability of liking Matrix.

Pika,
@Pika@lemmy.world avatar

I apperently had tried element out using a matrix.org account at some because when I went on the client I was already logged in, I vaugly remember it but it didn’t really give a great first impression.

anyway, I decided to look around it again to give it another shot, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to relate it to Discord, the documentation itself says it’s more similar to IRC than Discord. It lacks fairly basic features that you would expect to see in a current day chat service, for permissions example: they do have basic permissions and they’ve stated that more coming but there’s no way to fine tune them for example if you want to give the ability to delete message you need to give the ability for every permission under the below the redact message permission (which is hard set at perm level 50 if I remember right). This in my opinion is actually worse than IRC in that matter, as with IRC I could fine tune someone to have Channel topic editing permissions and the ability to hide that they are there but I didn’t necessarily need to give them disconnect or Banning permissions at the same time and visa versa.

I’m sure it’s perfect for some pieple but, I’ll stick with modern day implementations till they give a bit more control, but I’m pretty certain with the current spec it’s not possible at this time

lieuwex,

Beeper is a paid Matrix server that neatly integrates with many other chat services using a custom GUI specifically designed for integration with third party apps.

ninchuka,

There’s a free tier but there will be a paid tier eventually

yamasaur,

Just sign up for beeper they host all major bridges including imessage and then if you need additional bridges you can self host them

tostiman,
@tostiman@sh.itjust.works avatar

Very interesting

complacent_jerboa,
  • matrix isn’t a fediverse thing, it’s its own thing. it does happen to be decentralized, like the fediverse.
  • matrix isn’t an alternative to discord. it’s an alternative to whatsapp/signal/telegram/etc.
  • matrix is nice (I use it with my friend group), but it’s not perfect. we’re looking for something better.
  • if you’re looking for a decentralized, self-hosted, open-source, secure alternative for discord, my friends and I use Mumble. It works great for VoIP (and its noise cancellation software actually seems to work noticeably better than Discord’s), but it doesn’t really have the advanced text chat features that Discord does. We make do with Matrix.
JackbyDev,

not a replacement for Discord

A lot of people only use it chat and never touch the voice features.

complacent_jerboa,

Really?

JackbyDev,

Yeah! My wife does. There are communities she chats with there.

cafeina,

Hi! How much a matrix and mumble server costs?

ninchuka,

For matrix it depends on how big rooms you join, the way matrix federates the more servers in a room the more resources it’ll take to join it and send messages in it since you send a message to every server in a room, conduit is a much more efficient homeserver implementation compared to synapse

complacent_jerboa,

Well, if you host a server, you can either host it on the cloud (which costs $$$), or you can host it by yourself (if you have a spare computer that you can just use as a server). If you host it yourself, all you’re really paying is the same stuff you already pay — internet and electricity.

Hosting a server for something like mumble, matrix, or lemmy only has the costs I mentioned above.

arius,

Why is it an alternative to telegram but not to discord?

Wolfwood1,

It allows you to have personal 1 to 1 conversations and group chats, just like WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal.

Discord isn’t exactly the same thing as Telegram, that’s why Matrix.org is usually mentioned as an alternative to WhatsApp or Telegram but not Discord

WhoRoger,
@WhoRoger@lemmy.world avatar

On Discord you can have 1:1 chats and rooms as well.

But I feel both Discord and Matrix are better suited to room chats than 1:1, if for nothing else because the registration is a tad more complex than just receiving an sms, and you’re not sharing your phone number with a 1000 people.

I think the general vibe is that WA or Signal is for small friends groups exactly because of reliance on phone number, while the others aren’t.

Ed: also the E2E doesn’t “just work” like on WA/Signal.

Wolfwood1,

Yes, you can have 1:1 and rooms on Discord too, but the level of customization of rooms, roles and permissions Discord has is much more advanced than what you can find in WA, Telegram or Matrix.org.

On Discord when you’re in a server you can see (usually) every other user that’s on the same server, and in every room you’ll see some of those people, depending on the permissions. That’s not how the other options mentioned before work.

Also, on Discord you can have specific rooms dedicated to audio/video chats, on the rest (WA, Telegram, Matrix) it works differently.

I think it’s mainly because of those reasons that people compare Matrix to WA and/or Telegram instead of saying it’s a “Discord alternative”.

ninchuka,

there is work in matrix for video rooms, along with native group calls in matrix which once its added to the spec more clients will likely start implementing

HardlightCereal,

Does Mumble have an equivalent to PluralKit? PK is one of the biggest things keeping me and my friends on discord atm

complacent_jerboa,

what’s PluralKit?

tbh, Mumble pretty much just does voice chat and only voice chat, and just focuses on doing it well.

complacent_jerboa,

what’s PluralKit?

tbh, Mumble pretty much just does voice chat and only voice chat, and just focuses on doing it well.

HardlightCereal,

It’s a bot that allows multiple people sharing an account to appear as though they each had their own pfp and username, using webhooks. It’s mostly used by plural systems, which are groups of people who live in the same head. You assign a proxy to each member, which might be something like prefacing your message with a certain emoji, and whenever you type a message using that proxy (prefacing with that emoji), PluralKit deletes your account’s message and gets a webhook with a name and pfp of your choice to re-send the message. The bot makes it way easier to talk to a plural system and know who’s speaking.

ech0,

The True selfhosted open source alternative to Discord are Mattermost and RocketChat. My friends and I use both

HughJanus,

matrix isn’t an alternative to discord. it’s an alternative to whatsapp/signal/telegram/etc

Yes and no.

  1. Matrix is a communication standard. More like SMTP, RSS or XMPP than those things. I don’t know why Matrix specifically has this problem because you’ll never see anyone say “I’ve joined ActivityPub”.
  2. Element is by far and away the most popular Matrix client (similar to how Mastodon is the most popular ActivityPub software) and it has “Spaces”, which functions similar to Discord “servers” (not actually servers). Better in some ways but mostly worse. Namely in terms of stability and the function of “spaces” specifically.
complacent_jerboa,

While it’s true people don’t say “I’ve joined ActivityPub”, isn’t that synonymous with “I’ve joined the Fediverse”? Besides, the organization behind it does market it that way — they themselves refer to it as “joining Matrix, using one of these clients” (Element, Fluffychat, etc). Like, that’s what their website is called, and so is the Matrix server they host.

Their centralization is, I think, a little more advanced than Mastodon’s. The organization that maintains the protocol regularly adds features to it, and then of course immediately updates their own client and server implementations to have those same, recently added features, meaning the other client and server implementations are always behind on at least a few features. It’s becoming reminiscent of how the web browser spec is so bloated, and gets new stuff added to it with such regularity, that new browsers are basically impractical.

zephr_c,

There is certainly some overlap in what Discord and Matrix can do, and personally I like Matrix about a thousand times better, but it’s not really a direct replacement. That’s not a criticism. I don’t really even want Matrix to be more like Discord. I just think presenting Matrix as a Discord replacement kinda sells it short and is likely to leave people looking for an alternative to Discord disappointed.

Hypersapien,

What are the differences between Matrix and Discord?

ssorbom,

First, it’s federated, meaning that different instances of discord can talk to each other, much like Lemmy.

Second, it allows for encryption. Matrix uses the same double ratchet algorithm present in signal.

Third, joining groups is optional. This is perhaps the biggest user interface difference between discord and matrix. Each conversation exists in a independent channel, or room as they are called. Rooms can be grouped together the way you would see in discord, but they usually exist independently of the groupings. Incidentally, matrix groups are called spaces. There are edge cases where rooms are not independent from spaces, but by and large it is not something most users will have to worry about.

Hypersapien,

But you interact with other people pretty much the same way? Text/voice/video chat?

ssorbom,

Yes. Matrix uses an integrated jitsi widget for voice and video. It is unfortunately not quite as polished as discord for voice and video, but it does work.

bouh,

Last time I tried, 3 years ago, jitsi was very much not ready. There were memory leaks, no sleep mode (one processor was fully used 100% of the time) and the video performances were bad (impossible to do a video conference with more than 3 people). How did it improved since then?

PorkrollPosadist,

On Discord, you cannot host your own server, and you cannot use any third party clients (without the threat of being banned).

You can host your own Matrix server, either on physical hardware, or a generic virtual machine you can rent from any number of ISPs. There are over a dozen compatible third-party clients (though many lack full feature coverage).

In summary, Discord is strictly a service. Matrix is a tool you can apply however you see fit.

noodlejetski,

it’s federated, but it’s not a part of the Fediverse.

kissland,

i wish people would stop thinking these words mean something that everyone knows

MBM,

Anyone can host a server that’ll talk to the others seamlessly (like Lemmy), but it doesn’t talk to Lemmy

noodlejetski,

fediverse.info

flop,

To explain more specifically. Matrix is federated, so you can talk to other matrix servers like Lemmy instances can. However, matrix not part of the Fediverse, which is built on activity pub, which lets Lemmy, Masotodon, Pixfed and others all talk to each other.

generic_lemmy_user,

Lemmy and Mastodon technically communicate on the same protocol, but they don’t currently communicate with each other in any meaningful way. Possibly in the future, but probably not imo.

ninchuka,

I think you can comment on lemmy posts from a mastodon instance

PorkrollPosadist,

Support for groups (i.e. communities on Lemmy) is coming to Mastodon sometime soon.

Nioxic,

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/…/federated

Fediverse isn’t a real word though

noodlejetski,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse

Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever,

Tried Matrix a few times over the past year or two and…

It kind of always felt like the liveleak of chat clients. Performance was horrible and all of the orgs that prioritized it were shady as hell (says something when SPTarkov was the least sketchy community).

I dunno, maybe I just “don’t get it”, but I also see no real need for it. Never say anything over chat/IM that a company knowing would hurt (also, people forget just how much power the instance admins of the various fediverse apps have…). And chat, by its very nature, is ephemeral. So migrating between instances doesn’t really get much.

With lemmy/reddit and mastodon/twitter, it makes more sense. Those are banks of knowledge that need to be preserved. And while there are definitely issues if a major instance goes down or defederates, there are theoretically ways to migrate and duplicate material. Mastodon supports account/feed migration and it looks like lemmy has community migration on the roadmap.

But for matrix/discord/irc? With very few exceptions, chat logs from even a week ago are not particularly useful. And for any larger chat room, the users who form a community tend to splinter off. The rest just come and go and are faceless interactions.

Kudos to those who use it/care. And I still wish there were an “open protocol” so that I could use the steam overlay to chat with a buddy playing elden ring on her xbox while I play trepang2 on my PC. But… we also can just call each other on the phone or use whatever chat client we want on our phones/a laptop/whatever.

And, I guess, in general I am increasingly worried about people with bad opsec. A lot of the “fediverse” discussions are reminding me of the crypto crowd thinking it provides a high degree of security and anonymity because a corporation is not involved. And they really don’t realize just how much power and access instance owners/admins have.

iZRBQEcWVXNdnPtTV,

Never say anything over chat/IM that a company knowing would hurt

I used to work at Discord and I can tell you that this is, painfully, not the norm.

Trapping5341,

And I still wish there were an “open protocol” so that I could use the steam overlay to chat with a buddy playing elden ring on her xbox while I play trepang2 on my PC.

I’m 99.99% sure that discord released an xbox app so you can chat on discord cross platform now. Haven’t used an xbox in ages though.

Quick google

joel_feila,
@joel_feila@lemmy.world avatar

That’s why i wpuld name my matrix instance not the fbi. It helps keepa the weirdos out

ninchuka,

what do you mean with “all of the orgs that prioritized it were shady as hell”?

Chickerino,

And, I guess, in general I am increasingly worried about people with bad opsec. A lot of the “fediverse” discussions are reminding me of the crypto crowd thinking it provides a high degree of security and anonymity because a corporation is not involved. And they really don’t realize just how much power and access instance owners/admins have.

people should always think that everything they post on the internet can be searchable and viewable by anyone, it is public information

ItsMeSpez,

Exactly. Drives me a little crazy seeing all these posts and comments about how the Fediverse has poor privacy. It’s a public forum people, you should be considering everything you say here to be freely accessible information. At no point did anyone promise that your posts and comments would not be available to someone outside the service.

Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever,

A lot of it is making sure people actually understand that.

Because people GLADLY say their deepest darkest secrets in twitter DMs and facebook chat and the like. But with fediverse stuff? It isn’t even the hope that you don’t matter enough for a large corporation to care (although, tesla has demonstrated that they’ll just search for the juicy clips to share around the office…). People don’t realize that it is the proverbial “Guy in his Parents’ Basement” who has all that access. And depending on how large your instance is, that could very well be a human readable amount of data.

Which is why I compare it to cryptocurrency. Everyone insisted bitcoin was super secure and blah blah blah. And… the reality is that you don’t even need a warrant or to scream “terrorism” to get access to transaction records for the entire planet. There are ways you can try to obfuscate your records, but they also tend to make you stand out.

At the end of the day: Everyone should act like there is a big burly FBI agent behind them at all times. But most people don’t, and it is worth reminding them of just who IS standing behind them.

veniasilente,

And I still wish there were an “open protocol” so that I could use the steam overlay to chat with a buddy playing elden ring on her xbox while I play trepang2 on my PC.

There are open chat protocols, like XMPP. The issue is corporations either don’t use them, or use them to enshittificate (that’s what happened to XMPP, even. As for open GUI protocols, which is needed for the second part of your message, same issue: there’s open protocols and open toolkits all over the place, but the corps that produce consoles and games won’t use them (or, when they do, they’ll still lock them behind an “ecosystem”).

tl;dr: choose better (more open) games, and you can have p much all the chat you want.

sol,

the orgs that prioritized it were shady as hell

You literally have no idea who’s behind Discord.

lhx,

It is unfortunately such a PITA to self host. Spent hours a few weeks ago trying to set it up and failed.

vext01,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Right. I think we need something simpler.

I’d be happy with something like irc, but with e2e, history and the ability to receive messages when offline.

Don’t need stickers, voice chat, video chat etc.

MeanEYE,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

Same experience. I wanted initially to make our own server for our company. So we could chat and communicate. Make public channels for support, etc. It’s such a nightmare to host and after days of trying I gave up. They also had bunch of problems when I tried using it. I even forced all of my developers to use it for work. Messages would get delayed, even lost. Signal is what we currently use for chat and it just works.

NathanUp,
@NathanUp@lemmy.ml avatar

You could always use Yunohost - it makes things much easier.

MeanEYE,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

Never heard of it. I’ll give it a look. Thanks.

randint,

Yeah! In my experience, when two accounts on averagely-performant servers send each other a message, there is often a 10 second delay.

ninchuka,

I’ve never had anything like that in the past few years of using matrix

MeanEYE,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

Mind you at the time I tried to use it, it was super early. Issues might be fixed by now. Or might not.

ninchuka,

They definitely have been fixed

cley_faye,

Uh? You need a DB server/service, and it’s basically a python script that runs in a venv, which can be easily setup on anything vaguely linux related. If you don’t want to bother with the command to setup a venv, there’s also a docker image I believe. We set that up in an emergency when covid restrictions showed up and so far the worst issue we have is sometime the client takes a few minutes to refresh after long breaks.

lhx,

I tried to run it with the docker image. Still a PITA. I’m not a noob when it comes to self hosting services.

mesamunefire,

Same. We had three developers try to make it work for a local makerspace and we failed. The default instructions are too complex ATM. I want to make it work sometime but that experience makes me want to wait. I only have so many weekends.

IRC is still a thing.

Pika,
@Pika@lemmy.world avatar

Ain’t that the truth, IRC was arguably the easiest service for me to set up, it had all the defaults basically set I think I only have the change one or two settijgs and open the ports, anything else was optional and it came with all the bells and whistles (of what you can get out of IRC… lol)

mesamunefire,

Yep super easy. And if you had a third party client it’s even easier for others.

marmo7ade,

Uh?

Because everything you said is common knowledge to the average person.

regular_human,

Bro you’ve just got to disentangle the gigabytes on the flux stack mainframe bro, it’s easy bro

cley_faye,

The average person does not self-host services yet. And if that comes to be, then yes, it will be common knowledge at that point. There’s also a fairly comprehensive documentation to get anyone with basic knowledge started.

tony, (edited )

Its requirements are insane… My little minipc which easily hosts my lemmy (multiple channels) and mastodon server (follow about 100 people plus retoots) without breaking a sweat couldn’t manage it. Installed matrix and subscribed to one channel and it simply buried the machine… I had trouble getting control back to shut it down.

sheeet… just switched it back on for a test… 2 minutes in and the load average is >60 & it’s already consumed 14 gigabytes. Idle.

lhx,

I spent so much damn time banging my head against the wall with it too. I could host an email server easier and get DKIM and all the various dns configs up and runnjng easier.

ninchuka,

give conduit a try its a homeserver implementation written in rust and is alot more lightweight then synapse which is the first HS implementation for matrix

NoNatNovember,

I don’t think that’s normal. I run Synapse and Postgres, and they only take about 200mb of ram together. Load is less than 2% on a 2-core vm.

pineapplelover,

The only real Discord alternative is revolt.chat

It’s not e2ee but it is FOSS and you can self host. Also, unlike Discord they actually have discriminators

notsofunnycomment,
@notsofunnycomment@mander.xyz avatar

Last time I checked it, it was said to be very buggy. How is it doing now?

pineapplelover,

I have not had any bugs in all the times I’ve used it

MeowdyPardner,
MeowdyPardner avatar

Someone needs to hook revolt up to a matrix homeserver. I'm kinda surprised there still isn't like a discord UI clone matrix client along the lines of how elk.zone is a twitter UI inspired frontend for mastodon. Having not used discord much I'm not sure what's really missing, maybe it's just the stricter adherence to spaces on the left bar and the lack of non-current-space-related channels listed above the current space's channel list.

Tbh I kinda hate how discord works (and how impossible it feels managing being in 30-40 servers and figuring out which server that doot-doot sound came from when at least 10-15 at a minimum have unread badges even 30 seconds after I mark everything everywhere as read), but I do love the look and feel.

hitagi,

I’m kinda surprised there still isn’t like a discord UI clone matrix client

Check out cinny.in. I use this on my desktop browser and it looks similar to the Discord UI.

sooperdooper,

Thanks for mentioning this, looks perfect

norawibb,

I’d use cinny for sure if they supported calls and video like element

ninchuka,

I think the plan is to start work on that once element call which is native group calls gets merged into the spec

KLISHDFSDF,
@KLISHDFSDF@lemmy.ml avatar

It doesn’t federate though. So if you stand your own “discord” server up, you can’t message anyone and have to ask people to join it. Matrix allows you to not just set up your own server but also interact with everyone else’s servers so you’re not isolated. Revolt is nice, but you’re, like discord, limiting yourself to a single instance who has access to everyone’s data.

ninchuka,

yeah thats the main reason I’ve not given it a try myself, I dont want to have to make an account for every server if lots of projects decide to host it them selves

Mereo,

Matrix is a great beginning… But it is still FAR from Discord right now.

ryan659,

I still don’t see why we can’t just use IRC anymore. The protocol itself is old but reliable, and just needs a good client or two to help people compare it to Discord a bit more favourably. Though I suppose the need for a BNC to fully match it is probably a bit much of an ask for most.

EthicalAI,

It takes a lot of work to support encryption and it’s definitely not end to end

It’s not really federated, you make a new account for each server I think.

needs rich messaging support. At very least markdown. Matrix supports images.

bamboo,

IRC not allowing users to receive messages while offline, not having multiple synced clients, not natively supporting media, not supporting voice or video calls makes it a complete non-starter.

vext01,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Does the new irc protocol fix any of that?

Ildar,
@Ildar@lemmy.world avatar

And there is XMPP

vext01,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Trued xmpp, but all the good features are extensions and not all client support them.

Ildar,
@Ildar@lemmy.world avatar

Psi+ supports almost everything, but there is no good mobile client

callcc,

Snicket is pretty good

vext01,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Right. Its about finding clients with a feature intersection that supports everything.

I dont have time…

Kushia,
@Kushia@lemmy.ml avatar

Hey you discovered why it never took off in the first place once Google and co got their mitts into it.

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

Personally I don’t think it’s quite there yet. Element is probably the best Matrix app but not quite at parity for ease of use to a regular user and the general design and feel of discord is better… For now

I believe it will get there though. We’ve seen the enshittification cycle happen so many times to chat apps historically it’s basically the most inevitable that discord will collapse eventually. Is anyone still using AIM? MSN? Case in point.

Secret300,

I definitely don’t think element is the best but yes it’s not there yet. Honestly the performance has gotten a lot better but I’m still waiting for VoIP.

element.io/…/introducing-native-matrix-voip-with-…

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

If not element what do you prefer?

Secret300,

Cinny or fluffychat

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

Interesting. Last I tried Cinny it was behind Element. I’ll give it a look again. Haven’t tried Fluffy. Linux and mobile only?

Secret300,

ye basically, you can use flufflychat in the web browser as well

nadir,

I think those were merged quite a while ago, right?

joel_feila,
@joel_feila@lemmy.world avatar

I remember how quickly furriea moved from groupme to telegram. Anyone remember skype or oovoo?

Honestly doscord not being shit already is impressive

Chickerino,

i’d give it one or two years before discord undergoes some serious enshittification, with the way most other social media websites have gone down, presumably due to them not being really profitable anymore, im sure discord will start pushing people into nitro more and more as time goes on, i mean as most other platforms discord is already taking advantage of our data, but so did twitter and look where twitter is going now lol

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

Mostly true although I’d caution on the use of “profit” here. Profit isn’t the problem that causes this. Growth is. Almost all of these companies grow using investor money operating at a loss, radically cut costs then sell, netting their investors a packet.

It’s when the growth slows that the enshittification occurs (via radically cutting costs).

The only “profit” that matters is at the point of sale for the various company owners that invested.

Chickerino,

yea i agree, growth would be a better word to use here

observantTrapezium,
@observantTrapezium@lemmy.ca avatar

Matrix was introduced a few months before Discord was launched in 2015, so better say that Discord is the proprietary and centralized alternative to Matrix 😜

DrQuint,

Discord was always a Slack clone from the start, so this goes further back.

jecxjo,
@jecxjo@midwest.social avatar

Matrix is almost there but the last bit might make chat impossible to be federated. And i say this as a matrix user and a server maintainer.

“Instant messaging” is a service with high demand. When all servers are in one location or have high bandwidth pipes between them its not much of an issue. But once you have a group chat with people on instances all over the place, some running on Raspberry Pis…you might as well be running an email mailing list.

piyuv,

How did irc resolve this issue?

ItsMeSpez, (edited )

I could very well be am wrong here, but I believe that IRC doesn’t have to solve this problem. IRC functions on a server/client model so someone sets up an IRC server and people connect to it and chat with one another. Every user is just connecting to a single server, rather than having users talking with one another who are not using the same provider. So long as you have a good connection with an IRC server, you will send and receive messages quickly and do not have to worry about messages hopping from one server to another over connections of unknown quality in order to reach their destination.

piyuv,

You are wrong, IRC specification says servers connect to each other to form IRC network, and a channel can be a distributed channel, which is known to all servers on the IRC network

See datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1459#section-1.3

ItsMeSpez,

Damn, knew I should have taken the 10 seconds this would have required to google. Thanks for the info!

jecxjo,
@jecxjo@midwest.social avatar

There are a few major differences for IRC.

First there isn’t any sort of message history or sequencing beyond what is implemented on a server. For IM if your phone is off and you turn it back on all the messages you miss are sent to you. This requires each message to be stored in a database or semi long term storage, keeping track of if everyone in the group had confirmed receiving it. IRC doesn’t track any of that, if you’re not connected you miss out which makes IRC have a lot less overhead.

The other difference is that server to server was a concept for building a network of location based servers for a single network. Its not federation, but handling user overhead. You don’t have random individuals running their own servers on subpar hardware causing undue stress on the network. You dont have thousands of instances with huge degrees of latency difference to deal with. Server to server was made so you could connect to east.myirc.co and west.myirc.co.

iod,
@iod@lemmy.ml avatar

Plain Matrix rooms are a bit too foreign to Discord users i’d say.

There’s another alternative being built which resembles Discord a lot more, is federated and as i understand is built around Matrix communities: github.com/commune-os/commune-server

Here’s a demo instance: shpong.com

irkli,

Plain Matrix rooms are a bit too foreign to Discord users i’d say.

Not so long ago, Discord was entirely foreign, to all Discord users. When it was new. Yet they persisted!

Kushia,
@Kushia@lemmy.ml avatar

Worth noting that persistence set certain expectations now that Matrix does not live up to currently.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • technology@lemmy.world
  • ngwrru68w68
  • rosin
  • GTA5RPClips
  • osvaldo12
  • love
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • khanakhh
  • everett
  • kavyap
  • mdbf
  • DreamBathrooms
  • thenastyranch
  • magazineikmin
  • megavids
  • InstantRegret
  • normalnudes
  • tacticalgear
  • cubers
  • ethstaker
  • modclub
  • cisconetworking
  • Durango
  • anitta
  • Leos
  • tester
  • provamag3
  • JUstTest
  • All magazines
    •