tl;dr :

  • Hexchat IRC client app development stopped
  • Linux Mint team was building IRC client to replace Hexchat
  • The team tried Matrix and liked it
  • Linux Mint’s communication channels are moving from IRC to Matrix
  • The desktop app will be named Matrix to avoid confusion
  • Ardor von Heersburg@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 months ago

    I‘m not sure if I like this. I use Matrix for a couple of years now and to be honest the more I use it the more I hate it.

    Everything just feels slow, clunky and some basic things are quite complicated to archive and some functionality just does not work.
    All that was okay for me in the beginning but it never got better.

    IRC and XMPP also had their problems but I often wish them back nowadays.

    • john89@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      I think Matrix is the future, it just needs better designers and implementation.

      They really, really shouldn’t do things differently than discord just to be different.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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        6 months ago

        Looks like you’re saying federation is the future, but Matrix is a bad federation implementation. And that sounds good.

        I still think forums are the best way to handle support. Even phpBB is better than any chat. Have a bot alert a chat channel that the project team hangs out for every new topic or something, if that’s a concern.

        • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlOP
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          6 months ago

          I still think forums are the best way to handle support. Even phpBB is better than any chat. Have a bot alert a chat channel that the project team hangs out for every new topic or something, if that’s a concern.

          Giving the users the choice to have IRC and a forum sounds nice to me. Forums for the longer conversations and be able to look up things with a search engine, and IRC for quick questions and informal chat.

          • cerement@slrpnk.net
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            6 months ago

            the issue isn’t so much with IRC, XMPP, Matrix, or Discord per se (aside from Discord having its own issues) – it’s that every dev/org/group is trying to use a chatroom as a replacement for support channels, wikis, knowledgebases, FAQs, forums, announcements, mailing lists, etc.

            [as the meme states: “I don’t want to join your fucking Discord server just to get basic information that should be on a proper website instead of hidden away in the archives of a fucking chatroom”]

    • baru@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Everything just feels slow, clunky and some basic things are quite complecated to archive

      It’s been that way for much longer than a few years unfortunately. I don’t understand how people can tolerate it. Some projects switched to it because it seemed more beginner friendly than IRC, but to me it’s not focussed on making things easy.

      • coolmojo@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        My problem with matrix is that you need email address to use it. Compared to the irc, where you could just use whatever name and ask questions straight away. Most distros I used came with an irc client preinstalled and preconfigured to connect to the support channel when launched. In my opinion that is more beginner friendly.