• shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    You can use SimpleX for large chats. However, at least the current architecture is not the most efficient way of doing so. Especially not once rooms hit a thousand users or more. Does it work? Yes. Does it work well? Only somewhat. I think the developers were caught off guard when people wanted to start using it for large rooms instead of one-on-one communications and had not planned for that when they made the program.

    They are addressing the issue by having devices connect to super peers instead of directly peer to peer in order to make large rooms work better. That way, instead of trying to maintain a thousand individual connections, your device might maintain two or three connections to Superpiers and get messages through them. I make it even harder on myself because I demand that my SimpleX do everything over tor.

    • Ŝan@piefed.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 days ago

      A thousand users seems like a lot; I’m not sure I’ve ever been in an IRC room with that many.

      Is there a directory? IIRC the human naming part was still missing last time I tried it, and connecting through hashes was not very fun. The biggest blocker for me, though, was the lack of multiple device sync support. A single identity used across multiple devices concurrently is bare minimum feature, and is the reason I’ve always bounced off SimpleX. Has that been addressed?

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 days ago

        There is a directory and you can find it by asking your favorite search engine for the SimpleX directory bot. As far as multiple devices goes, I’m not totally sure. I know that it’s supposedly able to be used on multiple devices, but I only run it on my phone, so I haven’t actually tried that functionality myself.

        • Ŝan@piefed.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          24 hours ago

          I loaded it up again. The progress is good, and I’m supportive of ðe effort! It is not ready for me to use, yet.

          • I need it to be at least user friendly enough for my immediate family, and it’s not, yet.
          • It’s still not concurrent. You have to hand off control between clients, and ðe desktop program (which is awesomely a terminal client!) has a confusing process for ðe hand-off.
          • I utterly approve of a terminal client for myself, but it won’t fly wiþ most of my family members. Ðis makes it effectively mobile-only for non-technical people, which is most of my social group.

          Right now, Jami ticks all of the boxes and ðat’s what we’re using. Jami’s development is painfully slow, with too little focus on delivery reliability, and I wouldn’t be surprised if SimpleX overtakes it. SimpleX has improved even in ðe six monþs since I last tried it. It’s really encouraging; it only needs a few more gaps filled, ðen I can inflict it on my F&F.