Where am I moving my friends group? Revolt is nice but not quite ready for primetime / getting a rewrite, and I’ve always been iffy about matrix.
Is a signal group chat literally where we’re heading to!?
As someone who runs a Mumble server (and has for over a decade) – it’s really not a replacement for the user experience that is Discord.
People want a unified UI, the ability to create communities with some amount of customization, embedded/live content, plus voice and video so they can chill and play games together. Mumble is just voice, and while it’s a very good implementation of that, it’s not even in the same user space as Discord.
Matrix does have all of that, though? Except for voice.
I use matrix/element for socializing and Mumble for voice chat while gaming.
To respond to each comment:
Element is a unified UI, available on PC/Web/Mobile.
Starting and managing a community involves hitting the + button, creating a community, creating rooms in that community, then setting permissions and ACLs - pretty similar to discord, though with more control as you own the server.
Embedded content is possible through the embed button.
Video and voice work, but aren’t great for gaming (see below).
Element Call (aka the new MatrixRTC spec) is great for video calls, but leaves a lot to be desired for chatting while gaming.
Matrix has moved very very slowly and I’m concerned it’ll have the same fate as XMPP, where it’s a bunch of very complicated standards, with maybe one compliant implementation that nobody wants to work on.
I also don’t think it’s a particularly good protocol design for a Discord replacement, it’s not federated it’s a distributed message protocol, which is an order of magnitude more complicated and intensive than potential alternatives.
That said, many non-perfect things have achieved widespread success, so I’m at least hopeful that Matrix/Element are able to catch on in a wider capacity.
Matrix doesn’t have multiple standards, it only has the one? Certain servers expose older API endpoints for backwards compatibility with old clients, but that’s all. The spec is standard and relatively stable.
Likewise, it is very much a federated protocol - dunno where you got the idea that it isn’t.
But, yeah, spec changes do take a while to get accepted/implemented.
Standards as in parts of the spec, as you said in the original reply:
the new MatrixRTC spec
Which is a fork of the WebRTC protocol and another “standard” on top of the REST HTTP protocol.
I should have been more specific with my language, it is federated, but specifically messages (events) are a distributed DAG, and I find the Matrix protocol overly generic for a replacement for something specific like Discord.
The end goal of Matrix is to be a ubiquitous messaging layer for synchronising arbitrary data between sets of people, devices and services
While matrix/element is still very much in development, it is improving constantly. A year ago i sometimes had issues with desynced encryption keys and now that never happens anymore. There is now a modern group call and screensharing system and the new ElementX mobile app which is much faster than the old app. Now there is also OIDC and in a few weeks QR code login will be released, so no more manually entering login and encryption key verification stuff.
You’re right, it has been released, but matrix.org and most other servers either havent activated QR login or arent using MAS. It will be sick tho, the demos make it look very fast and smooth.
Where am I moving my friends group? Revolt is nice but not quite ready for primetime / getting a rewrite, and I’ve always been iffy about matrix. Is a signal group chat literally where we’re heading to!?
What’s wrong with matrix/element? We started running our own server for our household group chats and it has been solid.
Why iffy about matrix? You could always use mumble or teamspeak still
As someone who runs a Mumble server (and has for over a decade) – it’s really not a replacement for the user experience that is Discord.
People want a unified UI, the ability to create communities with some amount of customization, embedded/live content, plus voice and video so they can chill and play games together. Mumble is just voice, and while it’s a very good implementation of that, it’s not even in the same user space as Discord.
Matrix does have all of that, though? Except for voice.
I use matrix/element for socializing and Mumble for voice chat while gaming.
To respond to each comment:
Element Call (aka the new MatrixRTC spec) is great for video calls, but leaves a lot to be desired for chatting while gaming.
Matrix has moved very very slowly and I’m concerned it’ll have the same fate as XMPP, where it’s a bunch of very complicated standards, with maybe one compliant implementation that nobody wants to work on.
I also don’t think it’s a particularly good protocol design for a Discord replacement, it’s not federated it’s a distributed message protocol, which is an order of magnitude more complicated and intensive than potential alternatives.
That said, many non-perfect things have achieved widespread success, so I’m at least hopeful that Matrix/Element are able to catch on in a wider capacity.
Matrix doesn’t have multiple standards, it only has the one? Certain servers expose older API endpoints for backwards compatibility with old clients, but that’s all. The spec is standard and relatively stable.
Likewise, it is very much a federated protocol - dunno where you got the idea that it isn’t.
But, yeah, spec changes do take a while to get accepted/implemented.
Standards as in parts of the spec, as you said in the original reply:
Which is a fork of the WebRTC protocol and another “standard” on top of the REST HTTP protocol.
I should have been more specific with my language, it is federated, but specifically messages (events) are a distributed DAG, and I find the Matrix protocol overly generic for a replacement for something specific like Discord.
While matrix/element is still very much in development, it is improving constantly. A year ago i sometimes had issues with desynced encryption keys and now that never happens anymore. There is now a modern group call and screensharing system and the new ElementX mobile app which is much faster than the old app. Now there is also OIDC and in a few weeks QR code login will be released, so no more manually entering login and encryption key verification stuff.
QR code login is technically out, you just need to be running your own homeserver (and MAS) to use it.
But, yeah, exciting to finally have that.
You’re right, it has been released, but matrix.org and most other servers either havent activated QR login or arent using MAS. It will be sick tho, the demos make it look very fast and smooth.
SMS/RCS