RayJW

I don‘t think you understand my point. Let me be a bit more high level. It’s not about the three major outages WhatsApp had this year for like 30 mins. or whatever.

A perfectly set up Matrix server with more than enough resources allocated has issues decrypting messages when there’s a few hundred people and that’s without federation. This is still happening to today, fully updated server and clients.

As I said, I know they are working with a lot less resources than Meta. But at the moment the implementation doesn’t even do the most basic thing, deliver messages reliably. I know their new encryption library is supposed to do a better job but it’s just the cold hard truth that it’s not up there with the big messengers yet. Denying that doesn’t do the project any good.

Matrix does definitely not have the same reliability as WhatsApp or Signal. I’ve used it for around 3 years now with a group of tech savvy friends.

It’s still a regular occurrence that we get cannot decrypt errors, sometimes the app doesn’t show new messages in the chat but they are visible in the preview, also the app can be soooo slow.

Also, I know it’s not user error. If you check the Matrix development and follow their blog posts they already acknowledged the issues and are working on fixes. But for now it’s just wishful thinking when one calls them reliable alternatives for mainstream use. I’m not hating and will keep using the project because I truly think they are doing amazing work.

Sure, I agree. The problem is (and I’m sorry Matrix fans) but decentralised services don’t cut it for messaging at the moment. I’m on multiple Matrix instances which I use for different groups. One more tech savvy than the other, but still. Message can not be decrypted, or toggling one wrong switch and all messages become unreadable without you knowing. I would absolutely not have been able to switch 90% of my contacts to Signal if that were the experience.

Centralisation does not inherently have to be bad and Signal has been operating with good faith for many years now. I don’t see them selling out anytime soon and I think they are our best shot at a good FOSS instant messaging contender for the broad masses.

I really dig Signal‘s new long-sleeves. Depending what aspect of FOSS you like this might be something for you: https://shop.signal.org/

That’s fair enough! I can tell you it’s not that difficult but having a nice iDevice suite desktop application would certainly be a big improvement!

I don’t know why it isn’t mentioned anywhere on their website. But Organic Maps does have a desktop app. At least on Linux there is the Flatpak. I don’t know about other platforms.

Just so you know, libimobiledevice can backup iPhones with their idevicebackup utility. It’s CLI only, so maybe not as easy to get into as iTunes but it has worked pretty well for years on my end.

I know, it kinda sounds crazy, but at the same time it makes sense because after infrastructure the cost for the ISP is minimal. I mean upgrading to 25 Gbps is possible for just 70 bucks, so what can I say. Although my country is comparably small and I do live in the city. So it’s not universally like that.

10 Gbps symmetrical for 40 bucks a month TV included. It’s absolutely mind boggling for me how expensive internet is in North America.

Thank you for your recommendations :)

I’ve added SimpleX and Mullvad Browser, I didn’t add Strongbox though. I am already linking to a list containing different projects related to KeePass because I’m not a fan of adding all the clients separately. That’s just going to clutter the list because KeePass has so many different implementations and clients for all the platforms.

So someone already mentioned this, but there is this list I maintain on Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/RayJW/awesome-foss

There is also this website which is pretty neat if you’re searching for an alternative for a specific software: https://www.opensourcealternative.to/

Oh yea, that makes a lot more sense :)

For sure! Super cool meeting you here. I love the work you’re doing. Sadly at the moment I can’t switch full-time yet (mainly on Wayland HiDPI displays) but I’m always checking the progress on good Wayland support, keep up the work! :)

Hey that’s so cool!!! I never thought I’d see my list posted around :)

Is it just the name you’re wary of or is there something you’d like me to change about it? I’m still working on it when I find new things or stuff changes but I mostly ran out of categories I have knowledge of :(

Hence the wording, right decision back when they were closed source :)

Hot take: but I think it makes sense. If anyone would pay for a closed source editor it’s mac developers hence it made sense to chose that as your first platform to support, especially considering that they are a small startup. I don’t use mac either but I think they made the right choice from a business standpoint when they were still closed source.