@commetchat@fosstodon.org
I was immediately gonna comment “but does it support element-call” and to my surprise:
Supporting both, 1:1 calls over WebRTC, and voice channels with MatrixRTC + LiveKit
So to my knowledge this is the first client thats not an element fork that supports the new call system 🎉
Looks like it was added only a week ago, so maybe there will be some bugs, but still im very happy to finally see this in an independent client.
afaik both fluffychat and cinny support it, but they don’t advertise it well.
If the Matrix protocol actually implemented E2E encryption properly I would love to use something like this.
Please explain. They don’t have that?
If it’s the problem that I’ve seen people complain about in the past, it’s effectively the same as HTTPS ‘not supporting’ end to end encryption because it runs over IP and IP packets contain the IP address of where they need to go, so someone can see that two IP addresses are communicating, which is unavoidable as otherwise there’s nothing to say where the data needs to go, so no way for it to get there. Someone did a blog post a couple of years ago claiming Matrix was unsecure as encrypted messages had their destination homeserver in plaintext, but that doesn’t carry any information that isn’t implied by the fact that the message is being sent to that homeserver’s IP.
Maybe that would help because I have a really hard time understanding how matrix works.
Ive been using it for many years now and i understand it can be confusing at times. Do you have any specific questions that i might be able to answer? I have onboarded dozens of people at this point and somehow we always figured it out.
I appreciate your help. I might reach out to you soon.
Maybe I should also look up some YouTube videos about it. That always helps as well.
honest question, what is there to understand? it sounds you already got through registration so you are through the hardest part which is choosing a provider.
What is there to understand? It’s just a decentralized protocol - in fact, you don’t need to understand to use it. Just connect to chat server like you’d connect to one in discord.
Gee, thanks. That’s so helpful. 🙄
Is there a reason for not being centrally distributed like on flathub and fdroid?
Someone has to maintain that.
No idea.
The one silver lining of commercial apps shitting the bed (or shitting on their users) is that it helps accelerate development of FOSS/decentralized/federated alternatives because of the sudden interest.
God please let matrix figure out text channels and better calling 🙏
But… They already have text channels pretty much figured out and are on better calling rn with Element Call
The messaging experience between Discord and Element is night and day. On Discord, I open the app, go to a server, and can see all the rooms and all the messages almost instantly.
On Element (at least on Android), chats from different communities intermingle with my groups. I tapped on a large and slow-moving group, and watched messages slowly lurch into view as most of the messages were “join” and “leave” ones.
ETA: I tried Commet, and I’m happy to say that while it still has the loading issue and several problems typical to new apps, it does separate private group chats from ones linked to spaces!
On Discord, I open the app, go to a server, and can see all the rooms and all the messages almost instantly.
On Element (at least on Android), chats from different communities intermingle with my groups.
are you using the spaces feature in element? that’s the same thing as discord “servers”. they are on the left, unless you have none yet. the default setting in element is a bit silly, you should turn off showing rooms from all spaces when a space is not opened, it’ll be much better.
on phone the space list is at the bottom.
I tapped on a large and slow-moving group, and watched messages slowly lurch into view as most of the messages were “join” and “leave” ones.
which app are you using? element X, or the old, plain element? the old app is slow, the new one should work much better in that regard.
you can also disable showing name change and membership change events if you don’t care, but membership is good to be aware of and shouldn’t be a problem with element x
are you using the spaces feature in element? that’s the same thing as discord “servers”. they are on the left, unless you have none yet.
I wrote my comment when testing with Element X. You only get one room list, and it commingles chats from spaces with chats you made yourself.
You have to go to a separate screen to see the spaces themselves. On this screen, I clicked on a group I was in, and it took six seconds to tell me there were four available chats.
You can also disable showing name change and membership change events if you don’t care, but membership is good to be aware of and shouldn’t be a problem with element x
Even if you disable viewing the events, they’re still loaded in the background. I like to disable them, but then you see a lot more nothing and you may not be sure why the screen is empty for a longer while.
Joining a space requires you to manually join every single room in that space, which is bound to cause even more events in low traffic rooms…
Basically, Matrix isn’t fast, it doesn’t look like it’s gonna get fast anytime soon, and it is definitely not a Discord replacement.
I think this is a good example of how Matrix does support most of the things we expect from Discord, but the defaults are sometimes wrong (showing rooms from spaces if not in a space), and the sheer number of client apps that are all slightly different and outdated in various ways adds a ton of friction to using it.
The last couple updates made it better, but I wouldn’t exactly call Element a smooth experience. For example it recently began to try and access a keyring that doesn’t exist, ignoring the one that I already have readily available, and that works for everything else.
This is the latest in a long series of frustrating experiences with Matrix in general. To this day, Element isn’t stable, and Element X is somehow worse. It is, imo, a very promising option, but it is also far from perfect.
Yeah no in no world would I call it perfect. The web version had problems of decrypting encryption keys without a phone also connected and syncing for me. I used to have an account with Element directly for a subscription so that I could have certain bridges. Since they discontinued this and botchered the transition they shut down that homeserver. I wasn’t paying for a while but I expected to still be able to use the normal account matrix features on their homeserver. They just shut it down and mentioned it a few months previously in their blog posts but I didn’t ever receive a mail or anything. Their data export/transfer tool stopped working with their home server shut down. I would argue actually for smaller instances because I don’t trust the Matrix.org team as they split of from Elements but small servers also have a risk because they often depends on individual admins
Yeah I just set up a synapse + livekit server last night. Voice, video, and screen share rooms work flawlessly
Isn’t that its purpose?
Yeah, that’s the idea, but they are still not there
But they are?
This seems like the better alternative to discord than the other centralized platforms
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That’s a UX issue more than anything, IMO. Matrix is just a protocol
Yes it is, at least for real-time chat. I don’t know if Matrix has voice chat.
you can use voice and video rooms to my understanding of it, and yeah it can do calls. I haven’t really tested it much as my matrix server is just me and my wife, and neither of us are often out of eachothers sites very long.
Voice/video usually supported by a TURN server. If you check out the link in the OP you can see this app supports it.
That’s the old way to support calls. The new way is MatrixRTC/Livekit. Not all clients support it yet, but the website says commet supports that too.
Maybe I am just stupid but I can’t verify my commet session.
Welcome to Matrix
Looks good, I fiddled around with it for a bit. For now, I prefer FluffyChat. I‘m actually wondering how little it is mentioned in the recent pop up of discord alternatives / matrix clients given how polished and easy to use it is.
You’re just never going to convince me to use an app called “FluffyChat”. Same for “Contunuwuity” or other baby-speak “cute” names. Sorry.
Good on mobile but on desktop the UI is way too big i find
It is insane how big it is, there’s a slider for text size but that only affects the text inside of chats. The difference in the UI between Fluffy and Element on desktop means I’ll probably end up with Fluffy on mobile and Element on Desktop
Looks good actually… I think I will keep using Element for now… but for new people joining matrix coming from Discord, I would definitely recommend trying out Commet.
I really hope they add this to F-Droid.
Seems to currently be worked on https://github.com/commetchat/commet/issues/115
That issue is >2 years old and the maintainer hasn’t commented on it at all.
You can install from GitHub via Obtainium. I prefer to just use the PWA.
Saving this post for later when the inevitable happens.
Ugh. Another one that doesn’t support OIDC.
No macOS or iOS support, but looks clean.
Just install as PWA.
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God bless you
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You’re a freaking genius, you know that?
Ill do that and give it a whirl. Thanks for the PWA tip, i had completely forgotten about that.
PWA? Fill a noob in.
progressive web app. Some browsers will let you install a page as a standalone app running minimal version of the browser, this can be a snappy alternative to installing a package.
Progressive Web App
Put website in app-shaped bucket, use like app on phone. No app stores, special permissions, etc required
I believe it also drops the extensions from being used as well.
PWA + Apple products that is not possible anymore…
Interesting, I’ll have to check how it compares to Cinny.
