I see mentions of NixOS Matrix channels all over the place, but every time I try joining I face technical difficulties. How do other people join these chats?
I’ve tried two different Matrix clients, and neither are particularly pleasant to use; they both expose incomprehensible implementation details of Matrix and/or apparently fail to support important protocol features. It additionally feels like there’s a >50% chance that any given time I try launching a client I’ll run into some problem with my Matrix account (on matrix.org) – I’ll get an infinite loading spinner, or no list of channels, or some other bizarre thing.
I am quite unfamiliar with the matrix protocol and ecosystem.
I have been able to connect to the NixOS channels using the Element client: https://app.element.io/.
I did have some trouble resetting my password recently with Element client. Otherwise it felt like a modern chat web application.
You are not alone! In my experience, some cutting-edge technologies have a much higher investment of configuration, etc. Seems to me why some OSS folks stick to IRC and the like.
Unfortunately, all Matrix clients are problematic in some way. Most of the people I know use Element and I guess everybody learned what to touch and what not to keep it somehow functional. By my experience, threads are the most problematic feature.
But with every new version there is a hope of change
Even with Element, even ignoring the fact that Matrix supports threads (which I did not previously know!), there are somehow five different types of channel/space/room/“place where I can send messages”, with half of them being some kind of ancient legacy thing to do with the IRC bridge that I don’t know how to get rid of, and the rest having no obvious way to organise or browse them…
I am also having troubles. I’m trying to create an account, and at first I tried FluffyChat, which apparently doesn’t support in-app account registration at all (and the developer even mentioned a Matrix wide deprecation of this in favour of OIDC, which is insanity). Then I tried Element, which should support account registration, but I’m met with the attached error message. I don’t see any way to register on the website either.
Sign up to a homeserver: matrix.org is a good choice, and the UX should be guiding you towards this by default. Matrix homeservers are like email addresses, you can still communicate with users on other servers.
The NixOS homeserver is not open for sign-ups, and is only used for room-aliases and moderatation bots.
the developer even mentioned a Matrix wide deprecation of this in favour of OIDC, which is insanity
This is indeed happening, but it’s a good change. You won’t have to give your password to clients, it simplifies a huge part of the specification, and enables more flexibility for scoping client-access, and new authentication technologies (which come for free whenever someone implements it for OIDC)
