A Week in Matrix

The pain in admin'ing a server is real - even for my tiny one! I haven't bumped into these specifically with tuwunel, mostly SSO issues that have been resolved.

But man being able to have all my chats bridged to one thing where I can comfortably sit in a client I control and can freely modify? The feature set and integrations available are really tough to beat.

I feel this. And it doesn't even cover the very first conversation I have with my users.

  "You want to install Element"
  "But I want Matrix."
  "They call it Element now."
  "I want to speak on Element?"
  "No you want to speak on Matrix using Element."
  "Uh."
  "Don't worry about it. Look, just install Element."
  "Well, I see Element and Element X."
  "Oh right. Well, do you want to video chat?"
  "What?"
  "Element X doesn't video chat well. If you want video chat and a more featureful but slower chat experience, install Element.  If you don't care about reliable video chat and don't mind rooms jumping around and not organizing them, but you want to subscribe to a zillion of them, choose Element X"
  "What?"
  "Oookay, let me explain. See, once there were--"
  "Can't I just install the Matrix app?"
  "It's Element or Element X. Do you want to video chat?"
  "Um probably?"
  "Well then Element, not X, that's the one you want to start with."
  "Start with Element without the X?"

It's so needlessly complex.