Re: What are people using Matrix for?

I’ve been hearing about Matrix occasionally and I’m very interested in what folks are doing with it.

…

My fear is that I’ll be disappointed to find out that it’s just IRC with extra steps.

It is IRC with extra steps.

• It has a model of “the conversation is the data structure”, unlike IRC and XMPP where “the message is the data structure”. It aims to preserve the entire record, encrypted.
• Instead of DM you need to start a new 2-person room.
• For voice/video it does shell out to XMPP.
• It is aggressively bridged, which is a good thing, but that often renders the encryption moot.

I don’t mind it; I see people using it as if they were using a fancy IRC client. (Because you can join Libera IRC rooms using Matrix. The IRC channel doesn’t have to do anything special, a friend demonstrated this by joining one of my channels.) Or email, because you can do email from Matrix. The other way around, joining Matrix rooms with an IRC client or email app isn’t as easy. They have to initiate the conversation.

You can currently reach any channel on libera.chat by joining #<channel_name>:libera.chat.

Also if you are checking out Matrix, be aware of Delta Chat, which is unrelated to Matrix but I love it so far. I love the idea of it, at least, since I’ve always been a huge fan of email.

Followup

At this point, my attitude is something like:

>

XMPP: Preferred for everything.

Matrix: Good, but be aware of what you’re doing.

IRC: If I have to.

Delta Chat: Impossible to resist.

I wouldn’t know how to rank everything. There’s also Gitter and Mattermost and Fedi. Not to mention the awful things like S◯gnal, T◯legram, D◯scord, etc.