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I appreciate that there are more clients for matrix being developed, but I really wish there was more effort put into making a better server. Dendrite and Condu

I appreciate that there are more clients for matrix being developed, but I really wish there was more effort put into making a better server. Dendrite and Conduit are making progress, but it's excruciatingly slow. Synapse works but feels extremely clunky to set up and maintain, and that's not even counting the resource usage (which is admittedly getting better, but still harsh).

Arathorn 5y ago
Dendrite development is literally going faster than ever, with major releases every 2 weeks, and 0.8 out last Friday (https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/releases https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/releases), and 83% CS API compliance and 95% SS API. (Edit: see also the commit graph: https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/graphs/contributors https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/graphs/contributors) The core team is depending on it to power the reference P2P matrix implementation as per https://arewep2pyet.com https://arewep2pyet.com, plus we currently have dedicated funding for Dendrite, avoiding the team getting sidetracked by other stuff as they have been in the past. Meanwhile Synapse is continuously getting more resource efficient too, with Fast Joins landing shortly - and Conduit looks to be making decent progress as well. In other words, i think we’re about to enter a golden age of Matrix servers :)
- j-james 5y ago
  Are there plans to switch the matrix.org homeservers over from Synapse to Dendrite once Dendrite is feature-complete?
feanaro 5y ago
> Synapse works but feels extremely clunky to set up and maintain, and that's not even counting the resource usage (which is admittedly getting better, but still harsh). What's clunky about Synapse setup? I can perhaps see setting up a worker (sharded) setup is a bit complicated, but a basic monolithic instance is pretty straightforward. Also, how much resource usage are you seeing? My monolithic Synapse instance uses about 300-500M of memory usage and 5-15% CPU isn't at all bad and it's in a lot of rooms.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  It's hard to put into words, which is why I said "feels" rather than "is" ;) It might just be my own lack of skill, but I found myself initially getting overwhelmed at trying to hunt down which settings to change to ensure no federation or third party calls were made, since that was my usage scenario. Even then, a rogue "allow vector.im" snuck in here and there at first. My second go around a year or two later was much easier since I already knew what to look for, and had a better grasp of how to handle the ACME/DNS aspect of it all (which isn't the fault of the Matrix team at all, but was still a pain point). Some other pain points for me were grasping identity servers and trusted certificate providers and STUN/TURN and integrations, since there was a whole lot of learning necessary for me before I was comfortable just following the installation steps as-written. I did try the Ansible playbook during another attempt, and while it worked pretty well there was still the same sense of "wow that's a lot of configuration". I also foolishly tried to apply it to a pre-existing server running nginx, which, while possible, adds some extra complexity to avoid breaking existing configs. YMMV, I am just not the brightest of fellas. As far as resources go, a $5 VPS covered more than enough to handle even the older versions of Synapse for my use case, since I wasn't federating and have a fairly small number of users (under 100). I couldn't tell you whether federation or more usage would change that, but community reports (at the time) were that Synapse struggled. Much of that seems to have been addressed since then. Overall I think if I were to start over, I'd stick to the Ansible playbook on a fresh server.
- stevenicr 5y ago
  no op, but just went through my 6th synapse / element install.. A lot of the clunky is stuff like postgres settings - is the hbaconfig thing right? why is my default install of postgres oin deb 11 listening to public ips - why does it take 36 hours of chat replies to figure out that broken part.. why does certbot muck up my nginx - it's not matrix fault, or certbot's fault or nginx's fault - I just followed different parts of different tutorials for different pieces of the needed things and things broke. I wish support / QnA was moved out of the chat rooms and into a QnA wordpress theme so people didn't get ignored at whatever hour and issues missed. I tried ansible a bunch of times over times - some support happened, but I had to abandon it, even though it seemed to do 99% of the things.. I still can't get my element to allow 'explore rooms' guest joins - even though I had it working on my second install - and I double checked the settings - and I've asked for help 3 times in the room - and then there's the maintenance things in need - I'm shredding my first successful one since I can't get postgres to vacuum a 350GB DB on the droplet I'm paying too much for, and to find that out was a joyous long process of lots to learn. Anyway, I love it. It's the best. It's just clunky because there are so many other things that aren't easy, that aren't matrix. and the maintenance and other addin things are not easy - like I wish adding sticker picker was like adding a wordpress plugin - I could never get that working with ,y 1.2.6 install - but that's not matrix fault - it's just a thing that was tried and not easy for me, and the support help was a little - so cool - but not enough - so never worked. things like that. I really need to get ahead of the maintenance thing to remove old stuff and stuff - hope that works okay. fingers crossed - or I'll just be shredding a chat server every 6 months and starting a fresh one - haha.
ccakes 5y ago
Something I feel like is missing with both Synapse and Dendrite is some kind of tuning guide or config generator based resource availability/usage. There are a ton of values to tweak which impact the server and room sizes you can federate with, I’ve never been able to figure out how to come up with sane values to set those that also allow joining common, larger community rooms like #matrix:matrix.org I haven’t tried in a while so it’s possible that I missed something but for someone trying to set up a homeserver, even someone technical, it can be confusing and intimidating.
wink 5y ago
I appreciate all the new clients but I really wish there was a usable alternative to element for me that works on Linux and Windows. I mean, element is fine as a reference client, but I would so much prefer something that looks and behaves more like Quassel (and preferably not electron-based but I'm not judging if the RAM usage was fine). But every other client I tried either a) doesn't look like what I want b) is Linux only c) doesn't even reliably work.

Arathorn 5y ago

Dendrite development is literally going faster than ever, with major releases every 2 weeks, and 0.8 out last Friday (https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/releases https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/releases), and 83% CS API compliance and 95% SS API. (Edit: see also the commit graph: https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/graphs/contributors https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/graphs/contributors) The core team is depending on it to power the reference P2P matrix implementation as per https://arewep2pyet.com https://arewep2pyet.com, plus we currently have dedicated funding for Dendrite, avoiding the team getting sidetracked by other stuff as they have been in the past. Meanwhile Synapse is continuously getting more resource efficient too, with Fast Joins landing shortly - and Conduit looks to be making decent progress as well. In other words, i think we’re about to enter a golden age of Matrix servers :)

j-james 5y ago
Are there plans to switch the matrix.org homeservers over from Synapse to Dendrite once Dendrite is feature-complete?

feanaro 5y ago

> Synapse works but feels extremely clunky to set up and maintain, and that's not even counting the resource usage (which is admittedly getting better, but still harsh). What's clunky about Synapse setup? I can perhaps see setting up a worker (sharded) setup is a bit complicated, but a basic monolithic instance is pretty straightforward. Also, how much resource usage are you seeing? My monolithic Synapse instance uses about 300-500M of memory usage and 5-15% CPU isn't at all bad and it's in a lot of rooms.

jimmygrapes 5y ago
It's hard to put into words, which is why I said "feels" rather than "is" ;) It might just be my own lack of skill, but I found myself initially getting overwhelmed at trying to hunt down which settings to change to ensure no federation or third party calls were made, since that was my usage scenario. Even then, a rogue "allow vector.im" snuck in here and there at first. My second go around a year or two later was much easier since I already knew what to look for, and had a better grasp of how to handle the ACME/DNS aspect of it all (which isn't the fault of the Matrix team at all, but was still a pain point). Some other pain points for me were grasping identity servers and trusted certificate providers and STUN/TURN and integrations, since there was a whole lot of learning necessary for me before I was comfortable just following the installation steps as-written. I did try the Ansible playbook during another attempt, and while it worked pretty well there was still the same sense of "wow that's a lot of configuration". I also foolishly tried to apply it to a pre-existing server running nginx, which, while possible, adds some extra complexity to avoid breaking existing configs. YMMV, I am just not the brightest of fellas. As far as resources go, a $5 VPS covered more than enough to handle even the older versions of Synapse for my use case, since I wasn't federating and have a fairly small number of users (under 100). I couldn't tell you whether federation or more usage would change that, but community reports (at the time) were that Synapse struggled. Much of that seems to have been addressed since then. Overall I think if I were to start over, I'd stick to the Ansible playbook on a fresh server.
stevenicr 5y ago
no op, but just went through my 6th synapse / element install.. A lot of the clunky is stuff like postgres settings - is the hbaconfig thing right? why is my default install of postgres oin deb 11 listening to public ips - why does it take 36 hours of chat replies to figure out that broken part.. why does certbot muck up my nginx - it's not matrix fault, or certbot's fault or nginx's fault - I just followed different parts of different tutorials for different pieces of the needed things and things broke. I wish support / QnA was moved out of the chat rooms and into a QnA wordpress theme so people didn't get ignored at whatever hour and issues missed. I tried ansible a bunch of times over times - some support happened, but I had to abandon it, even though it seemed to do 99% of the things.. I still can't get my element to allow 'explore rooms' guest joins - even though I had it working on my second install - and I double checked the settings - and I've asked for help 3 times in the room - and then there's the maintenance things in need - I'm shredding my first successful one since I can't get postgres to vacuum a 350GB DB on the droplet I'm paying too much for, and to find that out was a joyous long process of lots to learn. Anyway, I love it. It's the best. It's just clunky because there are so many other things that aren't easy, that aren't matrix. and the maintenance and other addin things are not easy - like I wish adding sticker picker was like adding a wordpress plugin - I could never get that working with ,y 1.2.6 install - but that's not matrix fault - it's just a thing that was tried and not easy for me, and the support help was a little - so cool - but not enough - so never worked. things like that. I really need to get ahead of the maintenance thing to remove old stuff and stuff - hope that works okay. fingers crossed - or I'll just be shredding a chat server every 6 months and starting a fresh one - haha.

ccakes 5y ago

Something I feel like is missing with both Synapse and Dendrite is some kind of tuning guide or config generator based resource availability/usage. There are a ton of values to tweak which impact the server and room sizes you can federate with, I’ve never been able to figure out how to come up with sane values to set those that also allow joining common, larger community rooms like #matrix:matrix.org I haven’t tried in a while so it’s possible that I missed something but for someone trying to set up a homeserver, even someone technical, it can be confusing and intimidating.

wink 5y ago

I appreciate all the new clients but I really wish there was a usable alternative to element for me that works on Linux and Windows. I mean, element is fine as a reference client, but I would so much prefer something that looks and behaves more like Quassel (and preferably not electron-based but I'm not judging if the RAM usage was fine). But every other client I tried either a) doesn't look like what I want b) is Linux only c) doesn't even reliably work.