My bumpy encounter with Matrix
The great experience with Mastodon and the Fediverse made me curious about other decentralized and federated platforms.
As the next step, I decided to check out the Matrix messaging and communication network. Browsing the list of the main homeservers led me to join aria-net.org, the only one in Italy where I live.
As Matrix clients I use the Element web app on my Chromebox and the Element Android app on my Pixel 4 XL. Element has a clean, modern design the developers rightly describe as “glossy”. I also love the Markdown support, a key productivity feature. There are several features and settings I need to study in more detail, especially the message encryption options.
However, my experience with the Matrix infrastructure has been a bit bumpy so far as the homeserver has configuration, stability, and certificate issues.
When signing up, an error reported the handle of my account was already in use, but the server let me sign in with and use it anyway. As prompted, I tried to verify my phone numer but received another error. According to the server's help desk phone verification was disabled.
Sometimes the Element web app doesn't load or is slow. But an even more serious issue prevents me from using the web app. For the past severel days, visiting the website has been returning the error NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID due to certificate issues.
If these issues persist, I will have to migrate to a more stable homeserver. It won't be a problem as only one of my contacts uses Matrix so far.
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