I tried Matrix and almost crashed my server (because my server is crap)

<p>Matrix. The future of communication. HTTP API (which is technically swappable, so you can replace parts of it), encryption, bridging... And high memory usage of the official homeserver implementation! 😂</p>

<p>Matrix recently came out of beta. I decided to try it and bootstrap a homeserver so I could chat. Well, I did it. Federation test was failing for some reason, yet I have successfully joined some chat rooms, including the IndieWeb one.</p>

<p>First, it was <i>slow</i>. Well, it’s understandable; the server performs a lot of work, including signing and encryption, and my laptop’s CPU was clocked down to prevent overheating. But it also ate a lot of memory. People from "Synapse Admins" chatroom recommended me to increase the cache factor (which is controlled by <code>SYNAPSECACHEFACTOR</code> variable, if I remember this correctly) to speed it up. I did, and it became faster. Except it ate all of the memory of my laptop!</p>

<p>I left the server running for an hour or so, and when I returned, it was eating 6G of virtual memory, according to htop. I guess it’s caching a lot of stuff, which is a good thing. Except my laptop only has 4G of RAM. So it was probably swapping a lot. Sadly, I had to turn the homeserver off. Maybe another time?</p>

<p>Right now Matrix feels a bit like a monoculture - though I saw several homeserver implementations in development, which is a great thing! Maybe it’s just not for me, maybe I should just continue to base my life around XMPP (which I have configured too! It’s the same as my email).</p>

<p><b>Summary:</b> Matrix is definitely cool, but a bit resource-hungry for me. I should either get a better machine for the homeserver or wait until it becomes a bit less of a memory-eating CPU-heating (but certainly interesting) protocol.</p>