Pretty much what it says on the tin, but for more context. My friends and I use Discord to play D&D and other TTRPGs. We also use it to send memes and just have conversations. We mostly do the chat, text, images, gifs, etc. But we also use the voice and video chat pretty regularly too. Screen share sometimes as well. So I’d like to try to find something that has all those features if possible.
The new ID or facial recognition requirement they are implementing is a deal breaker for a few of us, and so if I can set up some kind of alternative to make it a non-issue, I’d like to.
I’m running Ubunutu 22.04 LETS, AMD 3700X, 64GBRAM, 10x 6TB HDD, and and 2 4TB NVmE. Have a 2gb up/down internet connection. So I don’t think we should have any issues making it work smoothly for 7 people.
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The main issue is you’ll never get the cretins that use it off it. Communities… they’re just sitting there burning the library of alexandria… all the esoteric knowledge they’re “putting on discord” is just gonna vanish.
over a billion in vc funding and discord is as shit as it is.
As an archivist and data hoarder I hate discord with a burning, visceral passion.
It’s funny you mention the VC funding. As far as I can tell, it’s only made it worse. Discord would have done great if they just kept expectations low. Instead, they’re now expected to create massive returns. That must come at the cost of consumers. I hope consumers get tired of it and leave, or someone else comes offering the simple service Discord used to provide.
Mmhmm, its also not early round funding so… where are they gonna get 3bn to pay back their investors? Or even break even at 1bn?
Is it worth preserving though?
So much tech support has moved to Discord. That’s worth keeping around.
Call them cretins all you want, Discord in a great piece of software and very powerful. The usability is better than most others.
Its a usability and information discoverability is a nightmare and its continuously probing my system in ways that I don’t want it to.
The usability is complete and total ass unless you’ve grown up knowing no better.
Edit: Also, its full of toxic ass communities with stupid little kingdoms they’ve set up.
All valid points. It is still popular.
toxic kingdoms
Exist here too.
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Can confirm, I host Matrix (homeserver synapse) and Element. Voice is a pain to get set up but I hear there are other matrix services which will do this for you easier. It’s a process though. You can get text chat up in a day, voice is going to be a bit after that, a lot of tinkering.
matrix is unreasonably hard to set-up, why doesnt the docker container or the compose include voice chat? i cant even sign up for stoat to try it out… is this the best we have against discord in the big 26 😭
XMPP is also still a thing and IMO much easier to host (at least ejabberd is). Look into Movim, which looks quite nice as a discord replacement on top of XMPP.
Have you Trier ESS?
TeamSpeek or Mumble.
Both have excellent voice chat.
Surprised no one has said it yet, but matrix.
IRC, RocketChat, Slack. Technically Matrix, but for your usecase I wouldn’t recommend it, as it’s a bit heavy, and if you’re just planning on using it with other people on the same server there’s not a point.
EDIT: Just noticed the voice chat thing. I’ve used Jitsi for that, and it works well. Also self-hostable
Not a bad recommendation, but I disagree.
Rocket chat is just as heavy (in fact, it federates to Matrix), uses MongoDB, and has steadily pulled features behind a paywall for years. To me, if I’m hosting the service on my own machines and I’m not using their live support, the idea of paying for the privilege of using it is absurd.
Matrix has come a long way, including integrated voice and video chats.
Fair, yeah. I didn’t realize Rocket had gotten heavy. I hadn’t used it in years, just remembered it being okay when I had. I’ve switched to XMPP for the same things I was using RC for, admittedly, it’s just… More like a traditional texting app than emulating Discord’s IRC-like experience
Matrix is pretty lightweight if you use something like Conduit or its spinoffs for a homeserver instead of Synapse, which is very heavy.
Good to know! Might try that at some point, just to see. I don’t care for most of the matrix UIs, but maybe self hosting one of them will make me xD
My guess is that it would be difficult to find a piece of software that does all the stuff discord does. But I also think it’s a non-issue. You could split these needs onto multiple solutions. My group uses mumble for gaming voicechat, Signal for group conversations, and a simple rtmp server for streaming. We don’t need nor use discord and never did.
I like the idea of a single piece of software that does one job well instead of a giant powerhouse that does everything.
https://github.com/spacebarchat/spacebarchat
Literally reverse engineered discord, made open source.
We switched to element (matrix-protocol) a while ago. Until now it worked fine for us - without any real problems. It already got a native voice/video-call implementation. But i heard that selfhosting isnt that smooth
I feel like Matrix has gotten a lot of hate the last year or so. Don’t really know why. Perhaps people see it as being misguided.
Yeah, self-hosting it can be a bear, especially since you need to deal with the whole “bots trying to kill it will regularly post CSAM in random channels, and if any of your users are in that channel it will federate to your own server and now you have CSAM saved on your server’s cache” stuff. It’s the same problem that Lemmy was dealing with during Reddit’s APIcolypse. You can always choose not to federate, but that largely defeats the point of the protocol existing in the first place.
You also need to set up TURN servers to get functional voice/video calls. WebRTC (like voice/video calling) tends to throw a fit without some sort of TURN functionality. That’s something the average Joe won’t know how to do, and is typically going to require a paid tier from some external host like Cloudflare.
Edit: I looked it up. Cloudflare offers TURN servers, with the first 1000GB for free each month, but then it charges for use after that. But that does mean a server that gets used for video calls more than a few hours per month could end up incurring costs. Because that TURN server would be handling all of the video streaming data, so it will quickly eat that 1000GB limit. It also means true self-hosting is prohibitively difficult, as you’d be tying yourself to an external provider unless you go out of your way to host your own TURN server.
Why federate if you’re just expecting a small group of friends to use it?
XMPP aka Jabber.
Yeah, we’re using Conversations and it’s fine for most things.
Will be self hosting prosidy “sooon”… and it’ll all be in-house.
Good luck! Report results.
Does XMPP work with group audio calling and video calling?
Yes, depending on the server/client
To my not up-to-date knowledge (2021-ish) audio calls work but they require an extension (on both participants) and are limited to 1:1, no “audio conference” support.
I do think there’s bridging for Mumble? If so that should at least cover the “audio chat” use case.
I replaced Discord(and Whatsapp) with Matrix/Element as voice chat (and general chat) with my wife. I remember running it with Docker was bit annoying to set up (I was selfhosting beginner when first doing it now it could be easier), but with Yunohost it is one click install (if you are willing with swap operating server).
Nextcloud Talk could work for your needs, but I have not personally used it so hard to recommend it.
teamspeak6 is in beta right now but it is my replacement for discord. Check it out, supports most anything people have used disc for
Short answer: No Long answer: No, but maybe in a year or two?
Is Stoat not an alternative, it literally copies the UI too
As of right now no. Too many missing features.
But in a year or two…
I’m hosting a matrix server it was rough but not impossible. Using conduit as the backend. Now that the setup is finally done it was so worth it. I would do it again if needed. Coturn was easy to set up along side it.
Haven’t found one that’s as good yet personally…
