Tech und FOSS Einblicke
Sun Feb 15 21:24:15 2026
There seems to be a giant missconception about Matrix. The protocoll, and its clients. Due to the news emerging on Discord and its future, it seems as if many people are looking for a new ’home’. Stoat, Rocket.chat, mattermost and what not are always recommended; however I have the feeling that every time Matrix is recommended that it’s immediately shot down from someone saying ’it doesn’t work’, or ’its not like discord’. As if rocket.chat is anything like Discord. The arguments usually seem to be that the channels are not working properly, there are permission issues, or that there’s no screen sharing/video calling.
All of these are not true. There is great video calling using Matrix’s new implementation of MatrixRTC using Element. The permission system whilst not as robust as that of Discord, is still great.
Some people also say that Synapse has issues, or federating your own instance is hard. Yes, if you are the kind of person like me who runs his own instance then you will come into these hardships, but talking to Discord refugees on the niceties of continuwuity and its Rust codebase as opposed to the Python codebase on Synapse is like telling a person who wants to switch from Windows to Linux as a casual user that they should really install Linux from Scratch.
To keep things short, Matrix is great. It’s not flawless, it’s not as polished as Discord. However, it is very usable and just fine for 99% of things the average user wants to do. Just join matrix.org, download Element and get online and enjoy a federated future.
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Edit on Wed Feb 25 17:46:33 2026: I still see misinformation about Matrix. Including one thread today where a vibecoded E2E chat program was being hailed as the replacement for Discord. Matrix is here. Instead of wasting time and trying to create other standards, push your code to Matrix and make it a great standard.
I had some fun setting up MatrixRTC this week. I used this guide, and it works well so far!
Yes, you can do a lot with Emacs. I use Doom Emacs, and really, if it can be done from Emacs, it will be done with Emacs. Including but not limited to:
I slowly have nothing left to configure. So before I start completely breaking my stuff or – god forbid – switch to Gentoo, I’ll start with some light blogging. It started on my website, but I think I will move it on here for now. On the side, nice and relaxed!
For a few years now, I’ve owned an R220 server that was initially only in operation occasionally. Electricity costs are of course high in Germany (almost 0.40 Cent per kw/h), but besides the electricity costs, the fan noise was also a problem. That’s why I only used it occasionally to try things out and then turned it off again after a week at most. I am also a musician, so when I needed to record, I had to kill the server… Suboptimal.
In 2024, however, I had an idea: Making the Dell R220 server even quieter.
I found a post on reddit. First, I only replaced the PSU fans with a Noctua variant, as the PSU fans are the only fans that aren’t controllable via IPMI and thus run at a volume similar to a lawnmower. However, as /u/Apserger96 warned:
IMPORTANT: When you put the fan back into the power supply, you must only use the two top screws to secure it. The lower ones cause short circuits! The two upper screws are sufficient for a firm hold!
I didn’t pay attention to that and wondered why my server only started for a few seconds. That was the reason.
Of course, I don’t recommend anyone to screw around in PSUs – the capacitors in PSUs theoretically retain their charge for a very long time. I waited half a day, and they do have safety features, but still: if something had gone wrong, it could have been deadly.
But it’s running now! Everything is quiet, and since then my server has been running 24/7. This post is also hosted on that server.