it's so nice that matrix really is the thing I've been looking for in terms of chat :
- it's IRC-like
- it's fairly secure by modern standards (unlike IRC)
- it's self-hostable but can federate
- it has support for rich media and video/audio calls
it's just a shame I personally know so few people who actually use it
@_sharpLimefox @_sharpLimefox I use it for irc anyway (liberal.chat) via the bridge they set up. Admittedly there's only one channel I frequent.
@_sharpLimefox If I hadn't gotten so deeply invested (in terms of having nearly a decade of conversation history) into Quassel IRC, I might be using Matrix. It's not yet at the low-maintenance stage for the admins of a small fuzzy IRC network I'm on (they have very little time), but for individuals it seems great.
Quassel IRC
oof, that name brings back memories of lonely evenings tweaking theme configurations
@_sharpLimefox Ah, I didn't know you used to use Quassel IRC!
Lately, the project lead hasn't had time to review changes, unfortunately, but there's still slight development going on. Quasseldroid is undergoing a rewrite to make use of the most recent Android development practices, too.
@digitalfox I used HexChat at first, then weechat, then Quassel (I needed something to stay online while I wasn't there, since having backlogs of what people said while I wasn't there was very important)
It's surprising to me that it's still under development, even if only occasional. QuasselDroid used to be the biggest pain tho
re: talk on Matrix/Quassel IRC/etc
@_sharpLimefox Makes sense! Similar reasoning here, though I migrated from Pidgin to Quassel, which was a substantial difference.
[The following is optional rambling - if you're not interested, feel free to ignore it.]
Quasseldroid has changed a lot - two rewrites as justJanne (the current maintainer) expanded her experience with Android development and as Google kept changing their recommendations for developers. Quassel 0.13+ with core-side highlights made a big impact as you get all missed notifications when QD connects regardless of how long you were disconnected.
If you're curious, the current version is at https://quasseldroid.info/ (not the upcoming redesign).
(Aside, justJanne lowercased the "…Droid" due to projects like DavDroid getting targeted by Lucasfilm: https://twitter.com/davx5app/status/1078775998911533056 )
My own stance is that Modern XMPP ( https://docs.modernxmpp.org/ ) or Matrix is likely better for folks just getting started with decentralized chat, but IRCCloud, Quassel, and The Lounge are probably the best IRC-first experiences today building atop IRCv3 ( https://ircv3.net/ ).
@_sharpLimefox I've been using Matrix and hosting a server for a few years and it's quite resource hungry and slow. They're writing a new server in Go but I don't think they can get around the fact that each server uses lots of storage space. I guess that's busyness as usual for people hosting fediverse servers though, but I kinda dislike that propension of decentralized software to replicate everything forever inefficiently b/c resources seem cheap.
after FreeNode functionally collapsed I haven't had the itch to go back to a simpler chat like what IRC was. I'm also too used to rich media / code support to handle raw IRC like I used to, so matrix is a really good compromise