But as far as I can remember, you can’t administer the rooms in a space as one. Like you need to be invited into each separate room.

Nope, again - I don’t understand who told you this. When you’re creating a room in Matrix you can make it either public, invite only, or only joinable via membership in a specific space.

Here’s a screenshot of the room security interface:

Not saying that you couldn’t add that, I’m saying they don’t seem to want to “do what discord did”. Which is a bummer since the success of discord clearly shows what would be needed.

You are correct in that they “don’t want to do what discord this”: recently (and you can see this in their apps like EleX) they’ve transitioned to looking and acting more like modern mobile chat apps like Signal/WhatsApp/Telegram - a decision I’m assuming they’ve made as most of their funding comes from people who want a replacement for those apps and not Discord.

Regardless, just using a Discord-like client (e.g. Commet) is enough to get the experience you want.

Yeah, all good points - especially the stuff relating to stickers (also, custom emojis).

Still, I’m hoping element gets their shit together and improves the default element apps (also brings Web/Desktop up to par with Mobile).

There’s only one standard, it has no forks. The discussion is about a filtering feature.

A lot of people don’t seem to respect spaces and communities - from my perspective it looks like the devs are currently pivoting to make the official client look and act more like Telegram/Signal/WhatsApp than Discord/IRC.

Your issue is that the dev team of EleX not prioritizing a feature you want.

If anything, this is a strength of an open source ecosystem: someone who agrees with you was able to, months ago, setup a fork that appeals to your work flow.

Try that with Discord, next time!

I also hadn’t used it in a while - used to be very rough around the edges.

Just installed it on my phone, it’s actually pretty usable now!

If you like Discord’s UI, there is a new Matrix client being developed - called Commet.Chat - that is trying to look and feel like Discord.

Might be worth checking out!

It does have that.

A “server” in Matrix is a space. A chat channel is called a room. A space can hold as many rooms as you want.

Fun fact, unlike Discord, a space can even hold other spaces in it!

SchildiChat Next is a mini-fork of Element X with proper spaces support (and some other nice UI additions).

I say mini-fork as it’s basically just EleX with some UI patches - so it follows EleX actively.

Matrix doesn’t have multiple standards, it only has the one? Certain servers expose older API endpoints for backwards compatibility with old clients, but that’s all. The spec is standard and relatively stable.

Likewise, it is very much a federated protocol - dunno where you got the idea that it isn’t.

But, yeah, spec changes do take a while to get accepted/implemented.

QR code login is technically out, you just need to be running your own homeserver (and MAS) to use it.

But, yeah, exciting to finally have that.

Matrix does have all of that, though? Except for voice.

I use matrix/element for socializing and Mumble for voice chat while gaming.

To respond to each comment:

• Element is a unified UI, available on PC/Web/Mobile.
• Starting and managing a community involves hitting the + button, creating a community, creating rooms in that community, then setting permissions and ACLs - pretty similar to discord, though with more control as you own the server.
• Embedded content is possible through the embed button.
• Video and voice work, but aren’t great for gaming (see below).

Element Call (aka the new MatrixRTC spec) is great for video calls, but leaves a lot to be desired for chatting while gaming.

From a chat standpoint, the two are near identical - yes - but Matrix lacks the “voice/video calls as persistent rooms” feature that Discord has. This was planned a while back, but has recently been pushed on the backburner^[1] as they work on Element Call.

Early on Matrix was sort of being built up as an IRC/Discord alternative, but recently they’ve pivoted more towards a WA/Telegram/Slack alternative as most of their financial support comes from European governments and companies looking for strong and secure internal communication solutions they can manage themselves.

So, TL;DR you probably won’t see the exact Discord like features you want land in the spec any time soon as they’re not being funded.

So that means, right now:

• No persistent voice/video rooms (but they are on the roadmap!)
• No push-to-talk or “game friendly” settings like voice auto-detection (also not really on the roadmap)

Having said all that, Matrix is brilliant and I highly encourage people to check it out. I use a Matrix <-> Signal bridge for most of my comms with my friends, and we voice chat on Mumble. Not ideal, but you get to avoid Discord and you get a very similar experience! Bonus points for Mumble as it’s super lightweight.

~[1] It’s not really on the backburner so much as it’s something that will have to be worked on after the new VOIP stack - Element Call - is integrated in the wider Matrix ecosystem. There is an experimental “video rooms” feature, but that really isn’t the same as a native, persistent voice-only room.~

Agreed.

Re: “(…) fuck however they want it spelt.”

As a Turkish person, I’m with you on this.

If the Turkish government wants you to refer to Turkey as Türkiye, then they shouldn’t be allowed to call the US “Amerika Birleşik Devletleri”: they should be required to pronounce it United States of America.

Let’s see how they like it then, lol. “Yunayıted Sıtets af Amerika”, hah.

Those all sound shitty - granted, I’m pretty sure I don’t have Copilot on my system, but maybe it didn’t ask me during the upgrade? Either way - my original point still stands: all of these seem just as bad as Win10 (to me, a person who barely used either).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad people are joining us on the Linux bandwagon, it just seems like the reasons for making the switch are almost arbitrary. Another way of putting it would be: "This is what finally pushed you over? ‘Copilot’?"

Anyway, regardless, I’m happy that people are making better choices - regardless of the reasons for doing so!

Been a Linux user for ages, I do have Windows 11 installed on another partition but I rarely - if ever - boot into it.

I mention the above spiel because I don’t understand what additional points people have against windows 11? It seems very similar to windows 10 for me - what’re the reasons for people hating it?

Genuinely not trying to be obtuse, here - I’m just wondering what the primary pain points are of win 11?

Is it the requirement for using a Microsoft account to log in vs. a normal local account? Or the one drive stuff? (upon install it did move most of my personal folders into a weird OneDrive directory, and I had to use the registry to wipe out OneDrive and move them back. Very annoying.)

FYI the link you shared causes a modal to appear showing your full name and a picture of your face.

If that was intentional, carry on - but, if not, you might want to delete this post/re-upload with a sanitized link (if that’s even possible)!

It’s the issues with XMPP’s spec: you don’t just use XMPP, you use XMPP + your favorite optional spec implementations.

If your friends aren’t on the same server/client combo then you won’t be able to communicate with them (effectively).

I loved XMPP, still do, but haven’t used it in years. If it were to get a single, matrix-style “spec release” (think an aggregation of existing features into one collection) that contains/requires a bunch of modern chat features I’ve come to expect from programs, then I could see it potentially having a resurgence.

I’m very excited for this! Granted, I do wish they’d stop “announcing” Matrix 2.0, but I think the release of SSS alone is reason enough for celebration.

I have sync issues with even Slack or WhatsApp when I use an old device that hasn’t updated in a while - Matrix’s new sync scheme is genuinely fantastic and fixes all the issues my aging synapse server was having (4+ year server means those initial syncs on log-in could tak upwards of 10 minutes).

Now I just want Element Call to work with my pre-existing accounts and then I’ll be ready for the next Matrix 2.0 announcement 😂

Might need to find more active communities?

The spam thing is annoying, but is a result of anyone being able to join a room and just upload images.

Really wish the large rooms would just disable image uploads, or use a bot to police new users a bit.

This is a pretty interesting idea! And I do agree that the feature to aggregate comments from multiple posts would be useful.