free software doesn’t necessarily mean federating with other services.

They have stated their reasons why they don’t wanna do it. You might disagree with them or not. But the technology they built is still open. Anybody could take what they created and use it as a foundation that does federate.

I‘ve had this issue on several distros and multiple friends have the same issue. Video hardware acceleration in a browser is a mess. This is definitely not only affecting me as there is a significant amount of complaints on forums and reddit.

And there is no way that the average computer user will use arch. And as long as you gotta fiddle around with your system to get even the most basic shit running smoothly like watching a high resolution youtube video and moving around windows on your other screen at the same time linux will stay irrelevant as a desktop os. It‘s still a system for nerds and I kinda feel like that this is okay.

Your first point is web browsing. Even that doesn‘t work properly on a linux desktop lol. Browser performance is abysmal because the browsers lack out of the box support for hardware acceleration. Even if you get it to work it might not work reliably and an update might break it again.

Try using a discord call and open a youtube video in 4k at the same time on a a freshly installed linux desktop. The audio will be choppy and the video will drop frames like crazy. Just moving around windows on your desktop is not nearly as smooth as it is on windows.

Would highly suggest you to stay away from Matrix and Element for now when it comes to using it with non techies. It‘s simply not there yet. It‘s slow, tedious to use, buggy and the ux is just bad. It‘s also not necessarily more private than the popular choices if used improperly which is imo very likely it you have your aunt use it lol.

Is there any feature of element that you need or why did you pick it? You could ideally just use Signal for group chat and group (video-) calls. Or even whatsapp.

I‘m not really a loner but I‘m also not willing to do much to be included socially if it requires me to do things that I don‘t believe in.

If your fancy night club requires me to be dressed in a certain way i have no interest of getting in. If your barbecue invitation requires me to install an app that I don‘t feel comfortable with I‘m eating potato salad at home.

No. It‘s the opposite of a new world order.

It‘s the old order doing everything to preserve its power.

What do you mean by built in?

Built in to the protocol? Built in to the application?

There is a couple of XMPP clients that implement omemo and/or otr encryption.

Matrix supports encryption on a protocol level. But it‘s relatively flawed.

You cannot really un-opensource software very well.

No brave users don‘t care. Brave proved how untrustworthy they are and in any case their business model is unethical yet they still have a cult like following plus a group of crypto bros that are obsessed with getting digital pennies.

I‘m old so i actually remember this but I‘m old so my memory might be shit but wasn‘t the lawsuit about the fact that microsoft shipped IE wirth windows as a default browser and not about it being too dominant?

I mean I don‘t want to discourage anyone from trying it out. I believe that the protocol is the future of messaging and I really want this to be the next big thing. But you need some masochism to acutally use it day to day. It‘s just not there yet. But give it a shot.

I use it everyday and it‘s still an absolute mess of a service.

Literally nothing works reliably :D

To be fair it might work a little bit better on android than on iOS and Desktop but the people I chat with that use android complain about the same shit.

I use it everyday on 3 different devices and it‘s a mess. :D

First of all it‘s slow. Like really slow. Sometimes loading a room takes 20 seconds.

Nothing really works reliably. Currently I‘m unable to leave a chat for whatever reason. Sometimes (like twice a week) the encryption just breaks. Every single message gets marked with a red excalmation point, saying that the keys are missing. The app keeps telleing me that I have unread messages even though i‘ve read all messages. I then have to mark every chat as read a couple of times. Sometimes only clearing the cache of the app helps. That happens every day.

There is probably more but that‘s what came to my mind first

Oh yeah…the service has privacy issues too when it comes to meta data. I feel like the bottom line here is, that Matrix/element are not there yet. It‘s very much alpha software that is not suitable for everyday use outside of nerds that enjoy the pain.

No…matrix is not p2p

Polished? No… don‘t bother with element if you want a good user experience. It‘s a buggy mess

You have a point there. But if you use a password manager with strong encryption, 2fa etc. you can minimize the risk somewhat. I came to the conclusion that the benefits of using extremely long, secure passwords outweigh the risks if you follow all the best practices. Plus the added comfort.

I’m currently running Mint on my Computer and Ubuntu on servers.

How do you check wether nsfw content is allowed?

Because my instance (feddit.de) doesn‘t allow pornographic material. I guess that doesn‘t exclude all nsfw content. But the column header is called adult and it makes it seem like „adult content“ aka porn was allowed.

*edit fixed typo