What is Matrix

Matrix is an instant messaging and presence protocol, which is at the crossroads of IRC and Emails with extra glitter. Its main feature is to be a decentralized protocol. It also offers bridges, which have made so many people suffer on IRC side, but it is not its main feature. What follows is a very quick introduction to some of the concepts used in Matrix. If you want a gentle but more extensive introduction, please have a look at this e-mail/Matrix comparison.

Matrix IDs

When you register an email to some email provider, you end up with a user@domain.tld (e.g. alex@coolplace.org) address. This means you are the user alex and your service provider is coolplace.org. You can send emails to andy@chillplace.net. Your inbox exists on coolplace.org, and andy’s inbox exists at chillplace.net.

Matrix works a bit in the same way. People choose a homeserver. Usually newcomers pick matrix.org, which makes it a very crowded place with performance issues. It usually makes a bad first impression, although people are working hard on performance improvements. Imagine if everybody used the same SMTP, the experience wouldn’t be great either.

The people at Element, the company who contributes the most to Matrix, offered to host a Matrix homeserver for GNOME. This allows us to have users on our own homeserver, which is a lot snappier.

We can have andy@gnome.org for Matrix talking to alex@matrix.org, but using an IRC-like interface instead of email. Federated instant messaging! There is another difference: the addresses are not formatted in the same way. A "Matrix address" is actually called a "Matrix ID" or "MXID". They are built as @user:domain.tld, which would make it @andy:gnome.org as an example.

Room IDs

Now why this odd notation for Matrix IDs, while keeping email style notation would have worked, you may ask? Because there is another type of ID in Matrix: the room IDs. The rooms also need to be on one server to easily be reached. A room ID contains two primary information: the room name and the server on which we are going to find it. A Room ID looks very much like a user Matrix ID, except it starts with the same sign as IRC rooms. As an example, this is the room you will automatically join when subscribing to GNOME’s homeserver: #general:gnome.org

The room is a lie

Because of the very decentralized nature of the protocol, a Matrix room rarely only exists on one server. It starts with the server where it was created (say, #coolnewroom:matrix.org). Somebody from GNOME’s homeserver joins and can create a local alias (say #wowcoolroom:gnome.org). This of course will not make the person from GNOME’s homeserver administrator of that room. And of course, it is possible for the administrators of the GNOME homeserver to limit who can create a :gnome.org alias.

What we will do

This tutorial aims at guiding you through the creation of a Matrix account on GNOME’s home server for Matrix, adding the Weechat-Matrix plugin to an existing Weechat installation, and configuring it to use the account previously created.

Weechat-Matrix is a plugin for the Weechat client. That plugin was created by poljar and you find details on weechat-matrix’s repository.

This tutorial was created for Fedora primarily. Some commands may vary depending on the distribution you use when installing packages, but the overall process is the same.

Creating a Matrix account on GNOME’s Homeserver

Important note: GNOME's Matrix instance will only allow you to create an account if you have an e-mail address ending with @gnome.org. If you want to understand why registration has been limited, please have a look at this article covering the reasons in-depth.

Installing the Weechat plugin

Adding an IRC server

What’s missing

This tutorial is not yet complete. The following bits are missing for now:

• How about spam?
• How to find the directory of rooms