Because all Matrix clients are so terrible that they feel like beginners projects, even the official one is so slow and bloated that it's almost a bad joke.

Comparing Matrix to polished apps like telegram or discord is... misplaced to say the least.

I least expected such a response here on HN. I can understand if this appeared on other communities but here we are.

We all know how open source Software moves forward. It's us who can put up with little inconveniences of an open source app and maybe even improve it by identifying, reporting and implementing fixes. Those polished apps are polished because they have dedicated teams that get paid hefty $$$ to ensure they do not loose existing user base. In matrix case the user base is very little but I think they have achieved something remarkable: a thriving community that is developing client and server Software required for matrix to work.

I wonder if we had this kind of attitude in starting days of Internet, we probably would not have Internet today. By the way, when did you last use any matrix client?

Well, it's not just about polish. In the case of Matrix, a simple look at their "feature matrix" shows that the only client that seems to be making any appreciable effort at all to keep up with the feature sets that are touted as selling points of the protocol (encryption, modern UI, "Discord-like" experience) is the bloated Electron monstrosity, and independently I have heard from multiple sources that the Matrix server software is so heavy that it struggles to support even a three-digit number of clients on commodity hardware.

This tendency to render your project unusable by choosing inappropriate development tools (perhaps for their seeming friendliness towards inexperienced developer - maybe if the same developers were forced to write in C their code would simply crash all the time, whereas as it is it "merely" runs slowly and/or leaks memory) is manifestly not an intrinsic feature of open source. If anything, in the old days, open source projects (such as Linux itself) stood out for being more lightweight and performant than their commercial counterparts. In fact, I think the first time I remember encountering an open source project that was rendered unusable by its bloat was with Diaspora (an early attempt to make a federated Facebook/Google+ replacement, written using Ruby on Rails). Perhaps there is something to the fashionable "fix social media" sector that necessitates making development inclusive to those who are more activists than engineers, even if this comes at the cost of sound engineering decisions.

The parent comment isn't complaining about matrix, but rather telling the plain reality of WHY people use discord instead of matrix.

By not acknowledging the importance of polish, you only push to keep the status quo ... and the status quo is that the masses are not using matrix.

But here is the thing, its highly unlikely that open source app will have polish compared to Startup with all the funding in the world.

There are very few open source application (desktop or mobile) that are as polished as commercial applications.

This is unlikely to change, but I still think it's worth trying to get as many users to use open source apps, because more users an app has - higher chance of more developers - better app. Not to mention no ads or spying and other crap that commercial apps are riddled with (General opinion not just chat apps)

Feel free to keep advertising Matrix. I'm myself a strong supporter of it.

But to get it into the mainstream, it needs to compete with other messaging apps such as Telegram.

For that, it needs polish. Period. There's no way around it. So if the goal is to get it into the mainstream (and personally, I want it to be), then that is what it needs.

There are loads of ways you can contribute to this:

1. Contribute time, code, designs, general help and volunteering

2. Contribute money via personal means or via work

3. Promote the use of Matrix to individuals

4. Promote the use of Matrix to businesses, eg. at work, or as a backing protocol for messaging where it makes sense etc.

5. Purchase products that make use of or contribute to Matrix

etc. But in order for it to become popular on its own, and acquire a network effect (which it needs, because IM apps are a class of their own), friction to get new users needs to be reduced to near-zero. And for that... polish is needed. That's it.

Not the OP, but I last tried every web/Desktop app on this list about a month ago:

https://matrix.org/clients/

I came to the same conclusion I have the past four times I tried. The same one as the person you’re responding to.

I have wanted to like matrix for so many years now but every time I use it, it's unbearably slow and things like gestures seem incredibly clunky compared to telegram.

Sure, apps with lots of paid developers have better gui, and flows than open source.

I still prefer open source. Managed to convince a portion of friends as well.

Matrix is good in theory but its UI is still confusing. I'm also bitter that my old account that was closed a long time ago cannot be retrieved or reset, which means that I cannot use my phone number again (it's stuck forever to the closed account).

What are you talking about? You do not need phone number. I self host matrix instance and all I did was create username and passwords for people I know and shared with them. They then logged in and changed their passwords. At no point the sign up workflow asked for phone number.

Also, the UI has improved a lot recently. There are number of matrix clients that have appeared on app stores but I still prefer Element which gets regular updates and features.

You don't even need to create usernames/passwords in advance - you can just send your friends custom one-time URLs, which will allow them to enter their own desired usernames and passwords.

https://zeratax.github.io/matrix-registration/

I'm sure you can contact the admins of matrix.org and ask for the phone number to be released. (I'm assuming you used that instance, as you mentioned nothing else.) I believe they are reachable at [email protected] .

Rather seems like a bug.

What phone number? I use Element, and I never had to enter my phone number at any point.

You can provide it for the benefit of your friends (or possibly enemies or attackers) to use it to find your Matrix ID from their pre-existing contact phone number.

I see. Seems like an useful feature for many people.

Matrix itself has as much as an UI as Email (even less)

Matrix is hardly an alternative to the features of discord unless you only use it for having a few grouped text channels.

Matrix is terrible for hosting communities compared to Matrix. Matrix is only good if you are okay having a single group chat for everyone to put everything into. A single group chat does not scale, so it's better to use a platform like Discord.

Matrix added spaces as a grouping of channels akin to a discord server back in september, so this problem is now solved.

A simple directory of rooms that you can join is still very far away from the way Discord works. Matrix is still focused around users joining rooms which where Discord is focused around users joining servers.

At least in the mobile app I didn't even know this existed. To find this directory of rooms you need to open up the spaces drawer. The you need to open a menu for the space by clicking on a stack of three vertical dots. I thought this would have things like settings or something in it, but no this is the way to navigate to important information. Then you need to click on explore rooms. You now can see a list of rooms you can join. You can now join a room with a tap. Then you have to open the room with a tap. This is extremely convoluted and hidden.

Meanwhile Discord doesn't need this whole process since you don't need to manually join rooms yourself.

Matrix recently added a feature called 'Spaces', which is analogous to a Discord 'server':

https://element.io/blog/spaces-blast-out-of-beta/

Spaces is just a directory of text rooms. Users don't just join every single room and rooms are independent from each other instead of having a single roles system shared between the whole server. In this model having an announcements channel wouldn't work since there will be people who didn't join the channel. Similarly people might not want to join a rules channel.

ATM people will see suggested rooms, auto joining is in the works.

However, don't see a problem. Why does it matter if they join each channel? you don't need to read a channel in Discord as well despite you are auto joined

>Why does it matter if they join each channel?

Higher friction to visit other channels means that it will mean less people will visit other channels. I've been in a Nix / NixOS room for a while and I had no clue I was in a space and that space had other rooms until you commented that it existed. I never had this issue with discord. It was obvious there were other channels the first time I used it.

> I've been in a Nix / NixOS room for a while and I had no clue I was in a space and that space had other rooms until you commented that it existed.

sounds like a temporary issue though: first only rooms existed, now Spaces exist, but the room directory still exposes rooms instead of Spaces