Fixes for buggy Lemmy stuff?

The decision was made to blow up the Reddit community and come here, so we have to make this work. But I'm already seeing a bunch of issues with Lemmy. Posting this so hopefully we can find solutions. Issues:

• Search-ability: I can't find people. When I search for users it simply doesn't work. Edit: Also apparently a client thing. Sucks though that if you choose the wrong client whole features just aren't supported.
• Messages: Pretty bare bones interface. I guess it's good enough to send you discord so you can have a conversation there.
• Replies: Looks like you can only reply to posts and not other replies 🤦‍♂️...so much for tractable conversations. This is my single biggest complaint about Mastodon - it's almost impossible to follow a single conversation. Really hope this will be addressed. Edit: looks like this was a client thing. Phew!
• Updates: I just tried to login on a different client but couldn't because the instance I'm on isn't up to date enough with the minimum support version.
• Clients: I've tried Thunder and attempting Jerboa (can't yet for the above reason), any other better ones?

I hope these are all fixable. The replies thing is pretty terrible.

Just so this isn't an entirely downer post, here's what I'm liking about Lemmy:

• Ad free: 🎉 Love love love this.
• Open source: Look, open source projects can be a little janky. But open source feels like a part of the DNA of this community, so I'm always happy to see everyone using FOSS.
• Community support: No matter what the interface, the people make the community, and it's been pretty cool to see everyone just keep posting and carrying on over here. Like, it's been a pretty smooth transition so far.