Back at FOSDEM we announced the idea of Matrix 2.0 - a series of huge step changes in terms of Matrix’s usability and performance, made up of Sliding Sync (instant login/launch/sync), Native OIDC(industry-standard authentication), Native Group VoIP (end-to-end encrypted large-scale voice & video conferencing) and Faster Joins (lazy-loading room state when your server joins a room).
Now, we’re excited to announce that as of today everyone can start playing with these Matrix 2.0 features. There’s still some work to bring them formally into the specification, but we’re putting it out there for folks to experience right now. Developers: watch this space for updates on the spec front.
Practically speaking, this means there are now implementations of the four pillars of Matrix 2.0 available today which you can use to power a daily-driver Matrix 2.0 client. The work here has been driven primarily by Element, using their new Element X client as the test-bed for the new Matrix 2.0 functionality and to prove that the new APIs are informed by real-world usage and can concretely demonstrably create an app which begins to outperform iMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram in terms of usability and performance… all while benefiting from being 100% built on Matrix.
Yeah, my home server has been running for more than a few years, and has been in a few large rooms - it’s gotten to the point that connecting takes upwards to a minute on the old client.
With Element X it takes around 3 to 4 seconds, regardless of room size. It’s delicious.
Alas I can’t get elementx working. It logs in but there’s no search for channels so I can’t join a federated channel to do a speed test, so I’m left with a blank screen. Sure I’m missing something obvious.
On normal element I tried to join matrixhq, for testing…
That was 2 hours ago. It’s still going… the log is fascinating… it keeps trying to connect to servers that presumably used to run matrix but don’t any more. No idea how far back it’s trying to go… could be years…
I’ve given it 32GB and every processor I can throw at it so it shouldn’t crash this time. Will be interesting to see how long it actually takes if it completes.