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Comment by encryptluks2 | Hacker News Reader

> We’re also working with the Tauri core team to provide cross-platform lightweight desktop apps as soon as possible!

How about a lightweight cross-platform Matrix client that doesn't rely on Electron?

Tauri + Electron (or Hydrogen) provides a lightweight cross-platform Matrix client that doesn't rely on Electron...

Meanwhile, Nheko, NeoChat, Fractal and others provide very usable lightweight native cross-platform Matrix clients too. Element is also working on its own experiments (TBA) based on matrix-rust-sdk.

Calling Fractal usable is maybe a bit of a stretch, but there are a lot of really good Matrix clients now!

Fractal-Next is really usable for me at least. (The times I've tried it) The only thing that is hindering it for me is the missing SSO-Support, but as soon as my MR is merged, it has SSO-Support

Fractal-next is looking very usable (thanks to leveraging matrix-rust-sdk as its engine), tbh.

i think you meant Tauri + Element

bah, so i did. doh

Well, it doesn't use Electron, it uses tauri, which doesn't bundle chrome but uses the native browser and is therefor much smaller, faster und more lightweight.

I had my hopes up after seeing “native” in the title.

But then, I have decisively given up on Matrix ever being anything even remotely a solution for individual-individual kind of personal usage. But I do hope to see it being used at (my) work places soon.

There are multiple reasons for that. It costs money and I doubt the general populace will pay for that and since Matrix/element won’t harvest data and destroy privacy it’s a no go. They don’t have limitless resources like large corps.

Fragmented apps, using different severs (let alone running the server itself) in the too many clients isn’t “people scalable”. (It it ever even begins to try it it has to one one single blessed server and a blessed app - which at least the current such app Element is long time from)

So no, they can’t and won’t invest in making Element mainstream for personal usage and rightly so.

So what Matrix/Element is going to be?

Slack, Google Workspace Char etc: - YES!

WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram: NO!

There are already like a dozen Matrix clients that don't use Electron. It doesn't take much effort to go to the Clients list and pick one out.

The problem is the group of users who have a problem with Electron also tend to have a problem with a billion other things (the size of the chat bubbles as another user commented here) so they end up never being satisfied with any client and any developer who tries to cater to them will be flooded with a wave of complaints about how the animation speed should be configurable.

I have a problem with Electron, personally. I think it's a rational thing to complain about. I just don't think that misrepresenting your case is a good thing.

Why not just use FluffyChat?

https://fluffychat.im/

I personally can't stand how big the chat bubbles in FluffyChat 1.0+ are. They were always big but now they are huge. I would have preferred it if they got smaller...

But with Element now shipping chat bubbles as an configurable option, I'll stay with that. For me, the new chat bubbles size is perfect.

Aside of that, I'm generally really fond of FluffyChat, they are doing a great job!

I used Fluffychat for a few months. I found its performance was rather lacking. It had slowdown issues and general problems that I didn't find with other clients.

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