• TheMurphy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve read about Matrix alot here on Lemmy, but I still can’t figure out how to get it.

    How do I get Matrix, how do I create rooms and how do I bridge other chats into it (I’ve read you could do that)?

    I’m probably stupid, but how do you do this?

    • LinuxSBC@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Think of it like email. You need a client (like Gmail or Outlook), which for Matrix is usually Element, Schildichat (a fork of Element), or Fluffychat. You also need a server (like gmail.com). The most popular one is matrix.org, though it doesn’t have any bridges. To get bridges, you either need to run your own server (much easier than it sounds with this) or use a server with bridges built in. Bridges are tied to the server. You also get an address, of the form @name:example.com, where example.com is the homeserver.

      If you want to do it the easy (but slightly proprietary) way, Beeper is basically commercialized Matrix with preinstalled bridges and a slightly better UI. Some of their stuff is proprietary, but they contribute a lot to FOSS (several bridges I use are by them), and most of the internals are FOSS.

  • eric@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I am unfamiliar with Matrix and just read their website, but I’m still kind of confused as to the importance of a new release sub-version to this general technology community. This may be a stupid question, but does matrix provide infrastructure for the fediverse or something?

    Edit: thanks for all the informative replies. I understand perfectly now, but I’m still confused as to why this was posted here. I’ve never seen software release notes posted before, so i don’t get why this is important enough to be here with such a high upvote percentage. Anyone have any insights on that to help my stupid brain make sense of this?

    • kpw@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      No it doesn’t. It’s basically a bloated and more advertised version of XMPP by some venture capital funded startup. Sadly, it doesn’t build on existing internet standards like XMPP at all, so there’s no real compatibility.

      • nakal@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        XMPP needs a connected network socket which is pretty bad in a time of mobile services. The 90s are over.

        • kpw@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Clients can tell the server to only send important traffic (=when new notifying messages are incoming) before going to sleep so it doesn’t use any radio now. Fast reconnects are also possible now, so we can wake up only when a push notification arrives. The only thing stuck in the 90s is your knowledge about XMPP.

          • nakal@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I know enough about XMPP or earlier called Jabber to not to run it anymore, after years of self-hosting Prosody.

            • kpw@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Well, apparently you don’t since you’re spreading outdated myths.

    • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Matrix aims to be a protocol for mostly real-time things like chat and voice/video calls.

      It has a data structure called rooms (think: chat rooms) that are spread out across multiple servers and the servers synchronize the content between each other. While ActivityPub (what most of Fediverse uses) is much simpler and just list posts adding API for interactions. Matrix aim to be a fabric to build decentralized alternatives of Discord, Zoom, WhatsApp, Google Classroom, Jamboard, Google Docs, etc.