Fractal For Linux

There's a lot to be said about Matrix (no, not the movie), both good and less so. In super simplistic terms, Matrix is "an open network for secure, decentralized communication."

Even though Matrix launched somewhere around the time Slack (and other similar messaging/collaboration platforms) appeared, it didn't "caught on." Nevertheless, Matrix is really amazing, especially for developers, and small/medium development teams that care about security.

If you're even the slightest bit interested in chat encryption and decentralization, and you're a GNOME user, then I would highly suggest you try out Fractal.

Fractal is a sleek, modern, GTK4 Matrix messaging app specifically designed for GNOME desktop environments.

Speaking of modern, it's written in Rust, and it's heavily optimized both in terms of features and GUI for large-group collaboration, making it perfect for open-source and free software projects.

Fractal's features (and its sublime GNOME integration) make it worth your while.

With Fractal, you can search, find, and access rooms for your favorite topics (even though, don't expect things to be at a Reddit-like level) as well as communicate privately with people (thanks to its encryption and decentralization features).

One cool aspect of Fractal is that it allows you to log into multiple accounts at once, making it fairly nice for multi-tasking (with Single-Sign On support). Of course, you can also send rich formatted messages, send files, share location, as well as view various types of media (play audio and videos directly within the app).

What's more, the app provides a lot of customization and configuration options.

To be completely honest, I find Fractal to be surprisingly good at what it does. It's a modern app (current version has been completely been rewritten as a GTK4 app on top of the matrix-rust-sdk.

It has enough modern features to keep almost everyone happy, however, it's worth noting that users should not expect all the bells and whistles (mostly gimmicks) of modern messaging apps. Nevertheless, Fractal is a very good Matrix app since it makes life a lot easier for users who don't want to rely on their web browser, all while looking awesome on GNOME desktops without compromising on its security and privacy features.