Getting ready for the Librem 5

Hardware Librem 5
1

Basically I wanna switch myself, my friends and family to use the Matrix communication service so that we’d already have a network of people when we’ll have our Librem 5s.

The thing is, that it’s very confusing what Matrix have on their website. A lot of brand names and logos and it’s easy to get lost. There’s like, Matrix, Riot, Riot.im, Vector Creations Limited…

So is this the correct app I’d need to download in order to use Matrix communication software on android, for example? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.alpha

And I’d assume that once we’ll have our Librem 5s, we’ll have Riot on them and so we’ll be able to communicate with friends using Riot on android, iOS, etc. right off the bat?

Thank you.

2

with android you should just install riot from playstore or better from f-droid
with the librem5 we don’t need riot, we will have a dedicated librem app for it already installed

at this moment riot is not user friendly, you can’t tell to someone to install and use it like whatsapp, i really hope matrix/riot developer will improve it alot in the next months, because i had to install and configure it to ALL my friends, none of them was able to install it and configure it to use for 1:1 chat or group chat

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They also haven’t yet changed their problematic privacy policy. So yeah, I guess I’ll go back to Signal until we get something reliable.

Thank you for your input.

4

Saying that Matrix is confusing because there are too many brands is like saying the Web is confusing because there are too many brands (what’s this Google? Chrome? Firefox? Edge? Mozilla? sounds like a dinosaur). Agreed that the Matrix website could be clearer, but it boils down to a protocol (Matrix) and a bunch of implementations made by different people (e.g. the Riot client, made by New Vector (formerly called Vector Creations)).

In terms of usability, we’re working on it as our top priority. 2017 was a tough year thanks to some funding issues which slowed things down, but we are now more-or-less back in the saddle and trying to catch up for lost time. We’re hoping that Purism is also going to support us in order to work on the Librem5…

In terms of our privacy policy; it requires $ to pay lawyers to fix it; please feel free to donate or encourage others to do so, or upvote/comment on vector-im/riot-meta/issues/132 on github. Meanwhile, usability is a far greater priority for us than rewording the privacy policy to look less scary.

In the interim, please feel free to use Signal instead if you prefer it.

1 Like
5

This did help make things clearer. Thank you.