• eric@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I am unfamiliar with Matrix and just read their website, but I’m still kind of confused as to the importance of a new release sub-version to this general technology community. This may be a stupid question, but does matrix provide infrastructure for the fediverse or something?

    Edit: thanks for all the informative replies. I understand perfectly now, but I’m still confused as to why this was posted here. I’ve never seen software release notes posted before, so i don’t get why this is important enough to be here with such a high upvote percentage. Anyone have any insights on that to help my stupid brain make sense of this?

    • kpw@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      No it doesn’t. It’s basically a bloated and more advertised version of XMPP by some venture capital funded startup. Sadly, it doesn’t build on existing internet standards like XMPP at all, so there’s no real compatibility.

      • nakal@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        XMPP needs a connected network socket which is pretty bad in a time of mobile services. The 90s are over.

        • kpw@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Clients can tell the server to only send important traffic (=when new notifying messages are incoming) before going to sleep so it doesn’t use any radio now. Fast reconnects are also possible now, so we can wake up only when a push notification arrives. The only thing stuck in the 90s is your knowledge about XMPP.

          • nakal@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            I know enough about XMPP or earlier called Jabber to not to run it anymore, after years of self-hosting Prosody.

            • kpw@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Well, apparently you don’t since you’re spreading outdated myths.

      • limitedduck@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        Notably missing from the comparison list is any mention of video or screen sharing, or anything to do specifically with games. These are Discord’s unique strengths at the moment and they have been for a long time. With that in mind, Matrix is a “good alternative” to Discord in the sense that most other desktop VoIP or chat apps are since Discord users aren’t using it for the privacy and openness aspects and want the Discord specific features and ease of use.

        Don’t get me wrong, I wish I could fully replace Discord with the Matrix instance I currently self-host, but there are things Discord just does better than every other app including having a bunch of features that range from meh to pretty good all in one package.

    • smileyhead
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Matrix aims to be a protocol for mostly real-time things like chat and voice/video calls.

      It has a data structure called rooms (think: chat rooms) that are spread out across multiple servers and the servers synchronize the content between each other. While ActivityPub (what most of Fediverse uses) is much simpler and just list posts adding API for interactions. Matrix aim to be a fabric to build decentralized alternatives of Discord, Zoom, WhatsApp, Google Classroom, Jamboard, Google Docs, etc.