Most of criticism of XMPP with regards to fragmentation and extensions can be applied to Matrix as well. In fact, the sliding sync itself already fragments the ecosystem by not being supported out of the box by many server implementations and therefore homeservers. Encryption often has to be enabled with some machinations as well if we're talking about clients other than Element (and electron-based).
On the other hand, XMPP desktop clients certainly work better and faster than Element, although some of them look quite old, which doesn't take away from their functionality.
IMO it's being heavily overstated how Matrix is better than XMPP.
This criticism kinda misses the point. E2EE, especially for group chats, is _the_ reason to use Matrix. It's an extremely hard problem, and you'll basically need to replicate what Matrix does if you want to solve it.
Doubly so when you add federation.
It required more than one iteration of Matrix to get it right, which I (personally) totally expected to happen. I don't think XMPP will _ever_ get it right.
Regarding clients, I don't think Element is worse than most (all?) XMPP clients when you look at the functionality past simple 1-to-1 messaging. And forget about mobile apps, XMPP just sucks on mobile.
> E2EE, especially for group chats, is _the_ reason to use Matrix. It's an extremely hard problem, and you'll basically need to replicate what Matrix does if you want to solve it.
I would be inclined to call this FUD. XMPP had E2EE before Signal and Matrix even were released. Current XMPP uses a flavour of double ratchet encryption (OMEMO) that puts it in par with those two, while working on MLS (just like Matrix).
> And forget about mobile apps, XMPP just sucks on mobile.
And yet, Conversations uses a fraction of the energy and resources Element requires. And does audio/video calls more reliably. And works well for 1:1 to large chat groups with thousands of participants.
I am actively using E2EE in matrix group chats daily. It is absolutely horrible. Matrix has not gotten it right.
It is a typical situation to observe "Failed to decrypt message" across the whole chat history. It is typical to observe reordering or even lack of messages, which make reading the chat unbearable. It is typical to have problems with session validation.
On one account I have even lost the validated status of another member's sessions, even though we have validated each other before and the only thing that changed is that they logged in with a different client. Since we live in different countries far away from each other, we just have to look at the red shield every time we open the chat and keep in mind that it's not a MITM but just a Matrix failure.
> XMPP just sucks on mobile
So does Element. I have <10 chats joined, and every time I open the Element app I have to wait for 10+ secs before I can start reading new messages. This will surely be fixed by sliding sync, but it's a problem of its own.
On the other hand, XMPP desktop clients certainly work better and faster than Element, although some of them look quite old, which doesn't take away from their functionality.
IMO it's being heavily overstated how Matrix is better than XMPP.
Also a nice read: https://telegra.ph/why-not-matrix-08-07
And the answer https://lobste.rs/s/wvi9xw/why_not_matrix#c_erbsnb