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.
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.
I just had to go and look this up to get more details
https://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?
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.
Where would be a good starting point to check out a list of instances with these bridges? And how safe are they?
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
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 https://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.
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
Sign up for beeper and all the hosting is done for you
sadly they’re on restricted signup
If you want to use a paid service from the developers, there’s Element One: https://element.io/element-one
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.
They actually link to a guide right on their website: https://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.
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.
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.
There’s a free tier but there will be a paid tier eventually
By the way, if you join an instance without these bridges, you could always search for bridges on other servers
Just sign up for beeper they host all major bridges including imessage and then if you need additional bridges you can self host them
Very interesting
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.
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.
This is what I’m referring to and am looking forward to trying it out once it’s ready.
But does it have activity detection and screen sharing?
Try Mirotalk when you need simple screen sharing. It uses browser based tech so no server/app/plugin required. https://p2p.mirotalk.com/
If you delve the bridges available, some support activity, some do not
Element does have screen sharing.