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Does anyone have experience with using Matrix [0] as an alternative to Telegram and Signal? Maybe even running your own homeserver which stores your history on

Does anyone have experience with using Matrix [0] as an alternative to Telegram and Signal? Maybe even running your own homeserver which stores your history on a server you control and syncs that across all devices? As far as I saw you can also bridge to other messaging services, even to WhatsApp [1] which is why it might be worth a try. [0] https://matrix.org/blog/home/ https://matrix.org/blog/home/ [1] https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-whatsapp https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-whatsapp

pinusc 8y ago
I'm currently self-hosting a Matrix homeserver! I got a few friends to join me and we use it to chat daily. I can't really speak for its security. Afaik the protocol is almost considered stable, and I trust it for everyday communications — but I wouldn't trust it if dealing with a nation-state level adversary. The only privacy pain point is that if you run a synapse home server (the reference implementation), by default your voice and video chats are routed through Google's servers. You have to run your own TURN server alongside synapse to prevent this. This is fine, but imho it's not well explained on the install guide. Riot is... Okay. It's great ffor power users, but imho is quite obscure for the average chat app user; the ux isn't great yet. Perhaps with the redesign... Lastly, bridges are the biggest reason why I want matrix to succeed... But as of now, none of them are really useful or even usable. They're all in very early stages of development and need contributions.
- squeezingswirls 8y ago
  >Lastly, bridges are the biggest reason why I want matrix to succeed... But as of now, none of them are really useful or even usable Why do you say that? I know many projects using bridges successfully. For example the UBports [0] guys have bridges between their Telegram and Matrix rooms. Besides FluffyChat [1] works wonderfully on UT phones, so that's a plus for them. [0] https://ubports.com/ https://ubports.com/ [1] https://christianpauly.github.io/fluffychat/ https://christianpauly.github.io/fluffychat/
squeezingswirls 8y ago
Yes, I do. If you have 39 minutes to spare I recommend you to watch this Ben Parsons talk at 35c3 https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9400-matrix_the_current_status_and_year_to_date https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9400-matrix_the_current_status_a...
unicornporn 8y ago
Yes, I've been using it alongside Signal and Telegram. It works very well. E2EE has been a work in progress, but it might have stabilized.
chin123 8y ago
I've been using Matrix with Riot since 2016 (then called Vector). Rooms aren't encrypted by default, however you can turn it on with the toggle of a button. One drawback I've noticed is Riot uses a lot of battery on Android (this is probably due to me not using the GCM back end), and on Linux as well (this is probably due to it being an electron app). Sadly there is no other Matrix client which is as featureful as Riot (for example, most of the others don't have E2E support), and so we're kinda stuck with it. I also tried setting up a matrix home server with synapse, however I couldn't get it to work with an nginx reverse proxy and let's encrypt, and decided to just settle with using the default home server with E2E enabled. Others have had more success with this however, so I must be doing something wrong. The experience is pretty good, and my friends and I have tried the Slack, IRC and Telegram bridges and they seem to work pretty well (infact the telegram bridge was so fast that I thought my friend was using the native client when he was messaging me). Haven't tried WhatsApp yet, though. I've also used matrix and riot to connect to large group chats on IRC and Matrix and overall its a more pleasant and user friendly experience than using IRC, especially on mobile.
Unklejoe 8y ago
Yes, I've been running my own homeserver for a while now. I use it daily to communicate with three of my friends in a group chat. I use Riot on iOS, they use Riot on Android. After the initial setup, I haven't had a single issue with it to be honest. On a somewhat related note, it's hard to get people to switch to something new, but I was able to get my non-techie friends to switch by showing that we can use it to exchange high quality videos without any size limit (well, I actually have it set to 1 GiB, but I can change it). That's one of the biggest issues when communicating between Android and iOS. Sending videos over MMS sucks.

pinusc 8y ago

I'm currently self-hosting a Matrix homeserver! I got a few friends to join me and we use it to chat daily. I can't really speak for its security. Afaik the protocol is almost considered stable, and I trust it for everyday communications — but I wouldn't trust it if dealing with a nation-state level adversary. The only privacy pain point is that if you run a synapse home server (the reference implementation), by default your voice and video chats are routed through Google's servers. You have to run your own TURN server alongside synapse to prevent this. This is fine, but imho it's not well explained on the install guide. Riot is... Okay. It's great ffor power users, but imho is quite obscure for the average chat app user; the ux isn't great yet. Perhaps with the redesign... Lastly, bridges are the biggest reason why I want matrix to succeed... But as of now, none of them are really useful or even usable. They're all in very early stages of development and need contributions.

squeezingswirls 8y ago
>Lastly, bridges are the biggest reason why I want matrix to succeed... But as of now, none of them are really useful or even usable Why do you say that? I know many projects using bridges successfully. For example the UBports [0] guys have bridges between their Telegram and Matrix rooms. Besides FluffyChat [1] works wonderfully on UT phones, so that's a plus for them. [0] https://ubports.com/ https://ubports.com/ [1] https://christianpauly.github.io/fluffychat/ https://christianpauly.github.io/fluffychat/

squeezingswirls 8y ago

Yes, I do. If you have 39 minutes to spare I recommend you to watch this Ben Parsons talk at 35c3 https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9400-matrix_the_current_status_and_year_to_date https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9400-matrix_the_current_status_a...

unicornporn 8y ago

Yes, I've been using it alongside Signal and Telegram. It works very well. E2EE has been a work in progress, but it might have stabilized.

chin123 8y ago

I've been using Matrix with Riot since 2016 (then called Vector). Rooms aren't encrypted by default, however you can turn it on with the toggle of a button. One drawback I've noticed is Riot uses a lot of battery on Android (this is probably due to me not using the GCM back end), and on Linux as well (this is probably due to it being an electron app). Sadly there is no other Matrix client which is as featureful as Riot (for example, most of the others don't have E2E support), and so we're kinda stuck with it. I also tried setting up a matrix home server with synapse, however I couldn't get it to work with an nginx reverse proxy and let's encrypt, and decided to just settle with using the default home server with E2E enabled. Others have had more success with this however, so I must be doing something wrong. The experience is pretty good, and my friends and I have tried the Slack, IRC and Telegram bridges and they seem to work pretty well (infact the telegram bridge was so fast that I thought my friend was using the native client when he was messaging me). Haven't tried WhatsApp yet, though. I've also used matrix and riot to connect to large group chats on IRC and Matrix and overall its a more pleasant and user friendly experience than using IRC, especially on mobile.

Unklejoe 8y ago

Yes, I've been running my own homeserver for a while now. I use it daily to communicate with three of my friends in a group chat. I use Riot on iOS, they use Riot on Android. After the initial setup, I haven't had a single issue with it to be honest. On a somewhat related note, it's hard to get people to switch to something new, but I was able to get my non-techie friends to switch by showing that we can use it to exchange high quality videos without any size limit (well, I actually have it set to 1 GiB, but I can change it). That's one of the biggest issues when communicating between Android and iOS. Sending videos over MMS sucks.