Hacker News Reader

Comment by barbazoo | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what makes you the authority of valid answers in this topic but as someone who has tried movie their extended family to Matrix, I'd take that option with a grain of salt. It's a lot more complicated than choosing the objectively best product.

View on HN

I'm curious why I frequently hear that Matrix/Element are more difficult to use than Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp, etc.

I set it up for my elderly parents who just got their first smartphone a few months ago, and it's been going very smoothly.

What are the complications that others seem to be having?

The more technical people in our group tried to register accounts but we were never able to "find" or message each other. It was orders of magnitude more difficult than getting started with telegram or signal. Don't get me wrong, I do want to use Matrix, it was just not feasible at the time. I do know that it's technically the more sustainable choice.

I see. I've only added contacts in person via QR code. I guess it would be more difficult without that.

Yeah, you just do a single click on "+" (which says "Start chat"), and then it says on top "Start a conversation with someone using their name, email address or username (like @foobar:matrix.org).", so you just type in @username:server. Is it difficult? Could it get any easier? There might be other ways as well, such as the one you mentioned.

Apparently there are more ways! You can provide your phone number so people can find your Matrix ID from their pre-existing contact phone number.

Seems like it has everything a non-technical person would want.

Only marginally, it is still very easy without the QR code.

Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, "just work", and it's zero effort to download, sign up, find contacts and start chatting. Matrix/Element is "good enough", but there's a lot of friction for each of those steps. Even I, as a technical person, get frustrated that there's some problem with my Matrix server every few weeks that I have to spend my time troubleshooting, sometimes missing timely messages because of it, or at least losing time that I'd rather be spending on other things.

> there's some problem with my Matrix server

Yeah, but grandparents (or whoever you are trying to introduce to Matrix) are not supposed to set up and run a Matrix server. If you meant that as an end-user you are having issues with the server you are on, perhaps you should use a different one. I have been using Element for quite a while now with matrix.org as my server, and I did not have any problems with the server I am on. The client is indeed buggy a bit[1]. Some bugs have been fixed since then though. If you run into bugs, report them please.

[1] There are many clients now for Android alone, for example, from F-Droid. Perhaps they are less buggier. I do not know.

It's not that I don't know how to solve the problems I face, it's that using Matrix requires more problem solving and has more friction, and that's one big reason why it's not the most popular choice.

Like I said: not necessarily. I did not have any issues with it for a very long time. I did no problem solving. It is achievable in most cases. Stick to well-known clients and servers.

Again, there may be bugs. They will get fixed. It happens all the time with any software. Element is maturing. It is really easy to just download and use without any problems.

No it does not. I just created an account at matrix.org and it worked fine. Does their client have bugs? Yes, but most chat clients have bugs. The only chat clients which have given me extra headache are WhatsApp (trying to get their web client to work and tryibg to stop them from scraping my address book), weechat (it is good but a bit non-obvious how to configure), Teams and Skype.

Edit: I forgot Google Hangouts which is very buggy and where it is almost impossible to add new contacts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com