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Comment by bilal4hmed | Hacker News Reader

After the last discussion I have been trying Element. It has some rough edges still but it has vastly improved since the last time I tried it.

Additional bonus, no electron based client, native apps for ios, Android, Web, Mac and even Linux.

If they can make the verification process for a new device smoother, I can recommend to folks. My worry is the amount of influence I used to get people to switch over to Signal only to ask them to switch again

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> no electron based client

The "Element" branded desktop apps are actually based on Electron, but since the underlying Matrix protocol is open, there are a plethora of fully native third party clients in varying stages of development.

Thanks for that, I had missed it completely since I was using the web version, didnt realize the official one was electron. Sorry about that

Oh no problem at all -- I think it's a great counterpoint to closed ecosystems like Signal and Discord which are actively hostile to third party clients.

If you don't like Electron, you're free to choose an alternative desktop client like Fractal (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Fractal) or NeoChat (https://invent.kde.org/network/neochat) or Nheko (https://github.com/Nheko-Reborn/nheko).

Or on the mobile side, FluffyChat (https://fluffychat.im/) and Nio (https://nio.chat/) are both solid alternatives.

If you're coming from IRC, there's a WeeChat plugin (https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix) or a standalone terminal client called Gomuks (https://github.com/tulir/gomuks).

It's still early days, but Element is genuinely committed to Matrix's success as an open protocol, and I find the community enthusiasm to be very encouraging.

Last I saw, Fractal did not support E2ee. Did that change?

And, are Nheko or Neochat mature enough for a daily driver? Lasy I saw they were very alpha.

Fractal just switched to matrix-rust-sdk, which supports E2EE - but they are currently switching from GTK 3 to GTK 4, which is delaying things.

Nheko is certainly usable as a daily driver. Haven't tried NeoChat yet, but it looks good. However, everyone's thresholds are different.

Thank you. I did not mean to be snippy, before.

I have found instructions to reverse-proxy matrix service, which satisfies my need for a minimal cloud presence and private (behind enforced NAT) homeserver. Combined with p2p via SQLite dendrite, that might solve my whole problem. (Is Dendrite considered ready for personal use, e.g. p2p, even if not a replacement for Synapse? What should I watch out for?)

I have not found details about identity portability vs. Synapse version. Can identity be ported out of a Synapse 1.29 homeserver?

We always wish software was ready before it is.

The problem with Element is that the matrix.org main servers can already often be slow with message delivery, and will only get slower as more people onboard.

And self-hosting Matrix is hard and requires pretty hefty hardware. If performance improves, it will certainly be a great option. For basic chats though, XMPP+OMEMO is still a really great lightweight option.

I'm excited for Dendrite, their new homeserver written in Go which will hopefully solve at least some of these performance issues. I've hosted a Dendrite server for a couple months now, but haven't had the chance to use it much.

With that said, it's been disappointing to see how slow development has been on it. Hopefully it picks up and they can get it out of beta this year.

Im looking forward to Dendrite, I think that changes the game for them in terms of performance. If im not mistaken at least one server was running on dendrite

They have https://dendrite.matrix.org, and they use Dendrite to test new features (like Spaces). But its issue is it's not feature complete so I don't think it sees that much usage.

Im using it right now with one other person and it seems to be just as fast as any other service Ive used.

It's not something that is always reproducible, and I suppose it depends on traffic and location as well to a certain extent. I've certainly found it satisfactory for general conversation but I do often see delays in delivery.

This is, however, something I also see with Signal. Texts can often take 5-6 seconds to deliver.

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