It's true you have to pick a server to use, but we try to provide decent defaults (although it's true matrix.org has been overloaded recently).
We're trying to simplify onboarding via P2P Matrix - by default, you'd start off entirely P2P, and only pick a server if you want to 'anchor' your account somewhere.
I last used it for the recent (Thursday, April 30th) Rust Zurich meetup. I've got it installed via apt, and updated to
riot-web version: 1.6.0
olm version: 3.1.3
Search didn't find the room. /join did.
Also it just took me over a minute to find the version number, because the client settings are hidden in a dropdown menu under my user name, not in the gear icon (tooltip "settings") on the upper left or the hamburger menu that says explore, and even in the right dropdown it's under "settings->help & about" instead of just under "help" where the "about" box has lived in every single program since the '90s...
Well, if search didn't find the room, it sounds like a plain old bug. (Or was the room marked ex-directory?) If you can file details at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues we'll dig into it.
And noted, in terms of the version number being in the wrong place on Riot/Web.
It's true you have to pick a server to use, but we try to provide decent defaults (although it's true matrix.org has been overloaded recently).
We're trying to simplify onboarding via P2P Matrix - by default, you'd start off entirely P2P, and only pick a server if you want to 'anchor' your account somewhere.
I have a feeling you may be going off outdated impressions here; we've been desperately trying to improve UI/UX (as per https://blog.riot.im/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing... and https://blog.riot.im/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing...).