I’ve been trying to use Matrix to replace sites like Discord or Slack. But it seems that if a user creates an invitation-only room in a server, then invited users who are registered on other servers get errors when trying to join. Not very useful error messages either: “Failed to join room”. (In my case, I tried creating accounts and rooms at nitro.chat and then at converser.eu, but friends registered at matrix.org don’t manage to join).

Quite a let-down. Anyone who’s facing the same problem and has maybe managed to solve it?

  • Andrew@piefed.socialEnglish
    15·
    3 months ago

    In my experience it looks like a case of matrix clients not doing a good job of communicating that things happening in the background haven’t finished yet, and throwing generic error messages (a bit like lemmy-ui does sometimes).

    I’ve been able to join invite-only rooms on other instances - it said ‘failed’ at first, but when I went back later it turned out that I had actually joined.

    • subignition@piefed.social
      2·
      3 months ago

      What are some of the popular Matrix clients that you’ve seen have this problem? And are they open source?

      I’ve been curious about Matrix for a while as a potential Discord replacement, but haven’t actually tried it. Might be interesting to check it out and see whether I can contribute to one of the clients somehow.

  • secret300@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    141·
    3 months ago

    I want to use matrix so bad but matrix clients suck and there’s no voice channels like discord

  • kali@fedia.io
    9·
    2 months ago

    Prose is an extremely good looking crosd platform XMPP client coming out very soon, I’m hoping that will help.

    Currently XMPP is my preferred federated messaging platform, but to say the clients are bad would be an understatement

    • stravanasu@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      Looks very promising! thank you for sharing. Seems worth trying and supporting.

      • endofline@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Yes it does support but best on desktop. On android only pretty much “legacy” and not anymore worked on element which has performance issues

  • Kairos@lemmy.todayEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    That error happens because the room federation sync takes longer than the join client-server request timeout. Just try again.

  • asudox@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    Matrix is not quite like Discord, but we have Revolt. Try that. It’s a discord clone.

  • verstra@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    It works great for a closed group of people, all on one instance. Another data point that federation is hard.

  • endofline@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    Which client do you use? Desktop is the best working, second android element slow and laggy but fullest implementation so far, worst are element x which they created only to test still draft phase feature speeding up syncing but otherwise half backed. There is no other third party clients which would be significantly complaint with the protocol

    • stravanasu@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      I’ve tried different clients: Element web, desktop, and android, and FluffyChat desktop and android. The problems seems to come, as other have written, when the matrix.org server is involved: it’s people from their handle there which experience glitches joining rooms in other servers. It seems this “part” of the fediverse still needs a lot of development.

      • endofline@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Yes, while desktop is mostly working well, other clients are far from being usable. I totally agree with this and choices of matrix foundation are not making it any better imo. Their inventing “new features” and not polishing current ecosystem, is not a best strategic choice

        • stravanasu@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          Agree 110%! It’s sad because it pushes back those people who were curious about alternatives and were willing to try. Hopefully things will improve with time…