Rather than trying to persuade people to use either incompatible or insufficient alternatives, we must call people to arms and actually create an alternative. Matrix/Element is getting very close and we need more people improving the ecosystem.
Element still needs a UX overhaul and voice channels and the basic building blocks are already there then.
As an element user for about a year: the biggest thing element needs is to make E2E actually work consistently. Every day I see random “can’t decrypt this message for some reason” errors, and it makes me embarrassed whenever I convince someone to try using Matrix instead of proprietary platforms and then I have to tell them I can’t read their messages and the first three things we tried to fix it didn’t work. This is the biggest reason why I want to abandon Matrix for good as soon as possible, and am working on creating another federated chat protocol.
element (like discord) is using an electron wrapper, which is awful and there is no way around it. what we need is a real client. nheko is far behind in features, so if anything, we need more people involved in improving that client.
I used to use Mirage (fancy interface, multi-account, i liked it except for lack of support for edits and reactions) until one day it had some weird error connecting to my homeserver and no matter what I tried I could never get it to connect again, even while other clients could. Even tried reinstalling Mirage and removing and readding my account but I could never get it to connect again so I was forced to switch back to Element.
i’ve had a lot of issues with getting nheko to sync for some reason. suddenly it just desyncs and all messages are encrypted. or it doesn’t sync at all and i only get messages on element on the phone. but yes, we should all collectively be against electron; it just gives google/chrome another platform to dominate - which is especially important to be now that they’re disabling adblockers.
Rather than trying to persuade people to use either incompatible or insufficient alternatives, we must call people to arms and actually create an alternative. Matrix/Element is getting very close and we need more people improving the ecosystem.
Element still needs a UX overhaul and voice channels and the basic building blocks are already there then.
As an element user for about a year: the biggest thing element needs is to make E2E actually work consistently. Every day I see random “can’t decrypt this message for some reason” errors, and it makes me embarrassed whenever I convince someone to try using Matrix instead of proprietary platforms and then I have to tell them I can’t read their messages and the first three things we tried to fix it didn’t work. This is the biggest reason why I want to abandon Matrix for good as soon as possible, and am working on creating another federated chat protocol.
i haven’t had this issue in over a year except for when using clients other than element.
element (like discord) is using an electron wrapper, which is awful and there is no way around it. what we need is a real client. nheko is far behind in features, so if anything, we need more people involved in improving that client.
Nheko is the best alternative that I know for the desktop scene. Tbh I hate electron apps.
I used to use Mirage (fancy interface, multi-account, i liked it except for lack of support for edits and reactions) until one day it had some weird error connecting to my homeserver and no matter what I tried I could never get it to connect again, even while other clients could. Even tried reinstalling Mirage and removing and readding my account but I could never get it to connect again so I was forced to switch back to Element.
I agree btw that Nheko’s the closest thing to a fully functional desktop client, just felt like sharing the story about Mirage
i’ve had a lot of issues with getting nheko to sync for some reason. suddenly it just desyncs and all messages are encrypted. or it doesn’t sync at all and i only get messages on element on the phone. but yes, we should all collectively be against electron; it just gives google/chrome another platform to dominate - which is especially important to be now that they’re disabling adblockers.
At least Cinny is kinda close UI-wise to Discord.
it doesn’t have drop-in voice/video channels though, which is the #1 USP for Discord for gamers.
That’s definitely an important feature for some.