I will be upfront with this, and say that I’ve never been a huge fan. But I did reinstall a Matrix server, and some clients to see if it’d gotten better in the year or so since I’ve last used it.
This just… Kind of feels like a more centralized XMPP with group chat folders that sort of function? The spaces feature is neat, but I’ve tried 4-5 clients, and every single one of those throws all of them into the same screen as the DMs by default, and I can’t find a way to change that.
Am I missing something here? Like. I want to at least see what people like here, I just can’t.
Omg I love this thread and this post. Sometimes I feel like everyone is crazy when they suggest alternative software.
People will be like “hey the best burger place in town closed can anyone recommend an alternative?”
And then a bunch of farmers show up like “yeah dude buy this calf and then just raise it real quick and also plant some trees to get wood for your smoker, you have a smoker right? Anyways yeah it’s so easy bro I don’t even know why anyone buys corporate burgers tbh.”
And you say “hmmm okay sounds like a lot of work but I guess I can try it?”
And you try it and it’s the shittiest blandest burger and it doesn’t even have any sauce or lettuce or tomatoes because fuck you those things are for corporate burgers and if you want to complain why don’t you open up a tomato branch and start contributing tomatoes then and waaah waaah why won’t the stupid normies eat my shitty burger that takes 6 months to make and doesn’t have ketchup waaaaah it must be because everyone is dumb and lazy
I 100% agree with you and at the same time it’s important to remember that a lot of FOSS software is written by individuals as hobby projects. Implementing features, keeping everything up to date and secure, documentation and testing takes time, effort and skill.
Most people need money to survive so they have a full time job and can only dedicated very limited resources to these projects.
Too many people got used to free services that “just work” and forgot that they are the product now. If you don’t want that look for alternatives that charge (even then you might still be the product) or better yet donate to open source projects in the hopes they will one day be on-par with their closed alternatives (there’s examples where this worked). Until we have a UBI and people have the time to dedicate themselves to a cool project this is the only way.
I think it would be even better if companies and governments started shifting funds back to these projects when they switch from commercial to FOSS software (which is happening more recently) but most just happily pocket the savings and this will not change until a fundamental cultural shift happens
Unfathomably based take. Holy shit.
You definitely have a point here. Software has to be usable if it going to have wide adoption by the people. Sometimes I see recommendations being thrown around without even thinking of it fits the needs and/or user expertise and willingness to make something work. But to be clear, just because one piece of software does not fit your needs does not mean it has to be changed to fit your needs. But if it is complex, clunkly and/or unintuitive, it is only going to be usable by a niche. And if this is the case, stop telling your grandma to spin a matrix server or xmpp and do not tell her she is an idiot because she does not have the expertise or time to make it work.