Can you recommend a lightweight matrix chat client to me? - eviltoast

My laptop is getting old and i can’t have Element eat up half of my RAM. There are many more clients out there but which one is good? aka "the best? ;-)

My requirements: lightweight, encryption 100% supported, active development/community. runs neatly 24/7 in the background.

Should also support the latest features, let me customize when to get notifications: priorities / muted chatrooms. And ideally also look clean and run on the Pinephone. But that’s optional.

I don’t care which desktop environment or cli.

What do you use?

  • kopper [they/them]
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    11 months ago

    I think more matrix users should consider using smaller instances tbh

    Matrix on smaller instances suck because of how bad the protocol is. It “re-plays” the entire history of the channel on first join because channels need to be consistent between all instances because Matrix isn’t just a mediocre chat protocol but a generic data protocol that’s been beaten into the shape of a mediocre chat protocol.

    It tries contacting every instance in a channel for their keys. Even the dead ones. And yes it takes exactly as long as you think it does for them to time out. Dendrite solves this by asking matrix.org for everyone else’s keys by default.

    But because channels are completely synchronized at least you get to easily migrate channels between instances just by assigning an alias and telling people use the alias to join instead.

    • @Lucia
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      6 months ago

      deleted by creator

      • kopper [they/them]
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        211 months ago

        Sounds a bit too centralized for me

        You can turn it off however that makes join times to any channel with history (say… the dendrite release announcements channel for example) unbearably slow to join.