There’s been quite a bit of…unsettlement (totally a word) regarding the news that Discord has a new CEO and the company is going public (typically a sign of things going shittier than before).
I’d just like to re-post this which I shared some time ago, if you’ll indulge me in my rare post which isn’t a Steam Deck / Gaming News # post - a rarity for me.
In the end, this is not the be-all-and-end-all alternative, it won’t be for everyone. Matrix exists of course. But this is a nice place. And I thought considering recent events I’d recommend it regardless!
Following is just a copy of what I posted last time. It’s mostly Linux chat, gaming, handhelds (like the Steam Deck), movies and…general chats. Anyway, here’s the post:
So…this one is a bit left-of-field.
A friend of mine (Gardiner Bryant of YouTube - who reports on Linux and the Steam Deck) has started a Revolt server.
What is Revolt?
It’s kinda like a FOSS alternative to Discord. You’ll see the layout is almost a direct copy, and it’s far less polished…but then again you haven’t got the downsides of Discord’s constant upselling either:
Why is this relevant?
…I can hear you ask? Well, so far its just a few developers and creators in there, but I thought of all spaces…maybe those very devs and creators whose work you use and watch…well it might be nice to join in there?
My personal friends who are in here so far are:
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imLinguin whose GitHub is here - but you may know most as a developer of Heroic Games Launcher
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Lazorne whose project is RetroDECK - my personal fav emulation option for the Steam Deck
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Eben Bruyns whose GitHub is here - but you may know best as the dev of Junk-Store
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Kyle Gospo whose project is Bazzite
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Gardiner himself, of course whose YouTube link is here,
What is the damn link to the damn server, woman?
I mean, you will have to make an account on Revolt, but it might be interesting to some here. You’re all very welcome!
For the record RetroDECK also got Matrix instance as well. But Revolt have so far been more active then Matrix (even tho we had that one for a long time).
But I do agree with that Discord is not a replacement for forums. You should not use Discord as your primary information hub.
For us our own wiki is the master of information. If something relevant is said in Revolt / Discord / Matrix we will add it to the wiki, people should not need to register various accounts to access the information.
Github is also where we handle “real” issues, while Discord / Matrix / Revolt is helpful for community members helping other with minor issues or general banter.
One reason why forums died out was the need for direct engagement and a sense of active community belonging, that they simply did not offer.
We also did not create all of these spaces from the beginning. Some community members did it, like the subreddit. Then you have a choice either you create it and own it, or a fan will.
Saying that the client is FOSS, but the server is proprietary, I like saying you have a chastity belt - with a ventilation hole in the back.
You finna get effed in the a.
Is it e2e encrypted?
No
I think all you can do in an open group chat is use vpn/tor/anonymous email. Besides private messages, but then the server can be forced to disclose the metadata.
I’m failing to find any info on how they are funding the servers in their website.
Well, once the service becomes large and popular we could try to find people interested in investing into the platform, then we just need to make sure it stays interesting to more and more investors over time. Should be sustainable, sounds oddly familiar tho but i definitely just made it up rn on my own
Revolt to Discord is what BlueSky is to Twitter.
Just another continuation that can (and will) enshittify.
Why do we fragment again? We have matrix already - why make another application.
Revolt isn’t new. Matrix and revolt are around the same age and are both not even feature competitive with Discord. So until there is a fully featured truly open alternative to discord, there will be still others trying to take discord’s audience.
Does matrix have multiple chat channels per server / community yet? Last I asked they didn’t understand my question. Basically matrix just isn’t meant to be a replacement for discord.
It does have that.
A “server” in Matrix is a space. A chat channel is called a room. A space can hold as many rooms as you want.
Fun fact, unlike Discord, a space can even hold other spaces in it!
But as far as I can remember, you can’t administer the rooms in a space as one. Like you need to be invited into each separate room.
Not saying that you couldn’t add that, I’m saying they don’t seem to want to “do what discord did”. Which is a bummer since the success of discord clearly shows what would be needed.
PS: It’s fine to do that as a UX design choice, more like IRC. But the issue is that people like you (no offense) say it’s the same when it isn’t. Like not even understanding what the problem is.
But as far as I can remember, you can’t administer the rooms in a space as one. Like you need to be invited into each separate room.
Nope, again - I don’t understand who told you this. When you’re creating a room in Matrix you can make it either public, invite only, or only joinable via membership in a specific space.
Here’s a screenshot of the room security interface:
Not saying that you couldn’t add that, I’m saying they don’t seem to want to “do what discord did”. Which is a bummer since the success of discord clearly shows what would be needed.
You are correct in that they “don’t want to do what discord this”: recently (and you can see this in their apps like EleX) they’ve transitioned to looking and acting more like modern mobile chat apps like Signal/WhatsApp/Telegram - a decision I’m assuming they’ve made as most of their funding comes from people who want a replacement for those apps and not Discord.
Regardless, just using a Discord-like client (e.g. Commet) is enough to get the experience you want.
If Discord is going to be abandoned by people, I wish we’d go back to proper forums that’s much more accessible and searchable. Continuing down this road is just going to lead to the continued burying of useful information behind these services.
I think there’s room for both, as in the old days there was typically an IRC channel along side forums that was typically a secondary channel (but not always).
But yeah, forums would be ideal, preferably with federation support so there is no need to make an account with every single one.
Well, you see IRC and forums went together because they filled two different needs and we understood that back in the day.
IRC was for chatting, short, quick real time communication that would be lost to the ether as soon as you signed off, unless you had a bouncer or log bot.
Forums were for long information, be that long posts or posts that needed to endure for a long time. Sure you’d get some one liner responses to those posts, but forums were not at all instant like IRC. Though the information did stay much longer, and was much more searchable and organized.
Discord has spoiled us, being quick and chatty while also allowing for longer posts and being searchable. At least within the Discord client. Shoot they even added those “forum” channels to replicate the old forum feel. But real time.
revoltmatrix and lemmy?i wouldn’t say discord “spoiled” us by trying to reinvent forums, i’d say it unnecessarily blurred the lines. classic case of feature creep.
Forums are just not great for real-time interaction like discord chat is, not to mention the integration of voice chat, video streaming, etc is just too convenient to give up without replacing it with something similar. I too wish discord/whatever replacement gets attention was more searchable and kept stuff long-term, but… if you want to post info that lasts, post it on lemme and link it on discord or whatever.
True, but I can’t help having nostalgia for ye olde forum days.
Edit: Not sure why I keep being downvoted. I never said forums would replace anything. I was merely acknowledging my nostalgia for old forum boards from a now bygone era. Didn’t realize having fond memories of a time period on the Internet was a bad thing. Jesus.
Fair enough.
I kinda don’t though. I quite enjoy real-time chat and voice and video with friends. It’s not like forums don’t exist at all anymore tho - you’re on one right now. I get my forum experience from places like reddit or lemmy, and I use them for very different things, so I’m glad both exist.
Reasonable, but you’d be fooling yourself to act as if forums will meaningfully replace Discord for most users.
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discord is not a forum (even if they want it to be with the forum channels), its never been a good location to store information. That being said, its amazing for real time communication unlike forums. I hate that devs use it for FAQ and bug forms and stuff. I stopped reporting bugs if it requires me to join a discord.
Discord is more of a chat room than a forum though, lemmy is a federated alternative to forums.
You’re on a forum right now, no? I think a lot of Discords have accompanying Reddits and vice versa, hopefully they start using Lemmy. But forums are still popular. Just not Ye Olde BBS
Not nearly enough of them. Too many frameworks or libraries have their QnAs on Discord instead of a dedicated forum.
I think we just need to split roles again.
Discord did there best to be an all in one solution and we just need a return to real time chat and voice along with asynchronous communication like forums
Amen! I remember the good old days of speciality community forums based on VB or even phpBB or in some cases Woltlab. I miss the simpler times.
Revolt isn’t federated, encrypted, has no video chat, claims privacy but that claim seems to be simply because they are based in Europe. The layout is nice and ui is better than element but that’s the only upside i see. I hate the matrix client ui’s and chat sorting options.
Exactly. I wish they would have just built a great UI on top of Matrix or even XMPP, but they insisted on doing it this way. None of my friends want to switch to something that they’re boxed-in with, they don’t want an app just for one server. Matrix is the only option we have, but all of the UIs are… meh.
Yeah, they kinda screwed up Element with combining mobile and desktop features into one app. The first time I tried creating a call on desktop, it was suddenly apparent how confusing they had made it, because you can do it in multiple ways (normal calls & conference calls).
There are other UIs that look very nice, but sadly don’t support voice chat. Hopefully these other clients can catch up, but it’ll likely take a while.
So, I briefly tried out Matrix some four years ago and left because it was utter trash and from what I gather from your comment it is still pretty much trash now. But despite there not being a single usable client, people still try to convince everyone that Matrix, by some obscrure metric, is superior to all other chat programs.
Sorry to say, but a chat protocol on its own is a tech demo at best and as long as there isn’t a single feature complete and usable client, it’s an alternative for no one except hardcore tech enthusiasts.
When I last used Matrix/Elements I had to deal with “lost keys” issues multiple times in just two months. This issue is a dealbreaker if it happens just once in a year and apparently, it’s still a semi regular problem for some of my friends.
Just accept it, Matrix will never be a replacement for Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram or even just Microsoft Teams.
Never is a strong word. Element has made a lot of progress and I can see the potential in it to compete with some of these platforms.
But no, it’s not there yet.
I agree, I don’t think it’s trash. From my experience, chatting is very good, voice/video are just the next thing they are tackling.
Better UX will probably come after important features are done.
I didn’t mean to say that it’s (still) trash, I think it’s useable, but there are still a lot of improvements to come.
Element as a client seems to want to do everything, which is probably great for a lot of people, but it (in my experience) has led to a poor user experience (which with more time, will likely improve, they seem to have a lot of backing).
With Element completing voice/video implementation, I imagine it’ll be easier for other clients to reference their work when implementing their own support.
Once the other clients get voice support, I will definitely be trying them out again, I’m sure they will make a much simpler experience that works out the box.
The lost keys problem has luckily never happened to me, it usually boils down the user error I believe, but yeah, if it is a user error that happens often, they should figure out some way to fix that (probably a hard problem, which is sort of fixed (i believe) if you use the client on multiple devices, so if you get logged out of your account you can easily authorize your access from another logged in device, eg desktop/mobile).
Also, revolt self hosting is broken. The web call functionality (WebRTC) is being rewritten but that effort is stale and out of the box it simply does not work. There is no real documentation about this either. It just won’t work and you need to invest a lot of effort to figure out why. The moment self hosting properly works, I’ll give it another shot. Not being able to connect without a fat client is a show stopper for me. There’s no way I can get enough traction for my groups if the barrier to switch is higher than a sheet of paper.
When self hosting all the shortcomings you mentioned are perfectly acceptable for me.
Revolt hasn’t added federation because it can be a major complexity increase in the codebase, but apparently they might be allowing instance owners to integrate polyproto support (polyproto is a work-in-progress federated chat system). If you want a discord like interface for Matrix, Cinny exists. I personally prefer revolt in some ways as Matrix feels like it doesn’t fit the use case for discord as well.
Cinny hates me. Failed to load module xapp-gtk3-module and then unable to complete frame buffer.
Screenshots look nice though!
There’s a web version you can use just fine
I really hope indie gamedevs start moving off Discord. Sometimes it’s the only source for finding help or reporting bugs.
I normally like GitLab issues as a place for bug reports.
A FAQ and an old style forum works pretty well for help.
In fact, just make a community on Lemmy for the forum part and you’ll have what’s required.GitHub also has this new “Discussions” thing which should do some good, for those that want to stay on GitHub
Just switched my friend group over to Matrix. Honestly looked at Revolt, but no federation was a non-starter. Convincing friends to leave is hard enough, unfortunately being locked into a single server was a non-starter. It’s too bad, they have a great UI, but I think they should have left the backend to trusted protocols.
If you like Discord’s UI, there is a new Matrix client being developed - called Commet.Chat - that is trying to look and feel like Discord.
Might be worth checking out!
Oh that’s AMAZING! I’m going to try it out tonight!
I also hadn’t used it in a while - used to be very rough around the edges.
Just installed it on my phone, it’s actually pretty usable now!
Just imagine the good they could have done by being a new competent Matrix client that can do everything, but instead they are a Discord clone.
It would have been a massive win win
So why not matrix?
Is revolt federated?
No and they don’t plan to federate it. Not on their roadmap.
Further Matrix is guided by the Matrix Foundation, a non-profit group.
But I mean sure let’s just dump one for-profit app for another as if it won’t follow the same path.
I think you need to re-read my post.
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I did not say to dump one for another
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I literally mention Matrix exists
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I say this won’t be for everyone
Another reminder, this is not my server, I just thought this was fun and I’m sharing an alternative. But I’ve tried reading all I can about Revolt, and I can’t see where they say it’s “for profit”. Can you link me to that?
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It’s easier to use and more polished. Also, not federated or decentralized. Although you can self host it
Self hosting and open source to me is the most important part. Federation can come if the need arises. I was just curious.
I’m personally going to stay on my matrix channels as they seem more established. But it’s good to have options.
Right now discord seems fine but I’ve already lived through many de-platforming events. And one day it too will go the way of the dodo. People getting attached to nameless online services is funny.
Thanks!
It would appear there is a character limit to the password that is not disclosed, nor prohibited, while creating your account.
Classic
its kinda useless without Voice, TeamSpeak however is making excellent progress. im hoping we just gi bsck to forums and stuff like TeamSpeak and vent.
Revolt has voice channels, and video is in active development
Sure! It’s great that there is other options, too. So people have options available to them if they want to explore those.
I’m not promoting this as a end-game solution to everything. It’s not even my server.
I’m just sharing this in case people who enjoy gaming and Linux and the people behind the projects, they might want to join in.
In terms of desktop applications, looks like Element and Revolt look pretty comparable these days. Mobile app Revolt looks better to me. Matrix seems way more established considering downloads of Element (there’s numerous Matrix applications) on Google Play and FlatHub
Mobile app Revolt is nice, but doesn’t support servers that aren’t the main one yet last I tried.
By memory there’s a community-made app for Revolt as well, but I can’t remember what its called, or the git link! When I find it again, I’ll link it here :)
I just went through this tree about a week ago. Downloaded the app for iOS to try it and would say it wasn’t ready for mainstream. It looks very similar to discord but it just consistently would crash or send me back to the website in order to get anything done. Even the main channel for Revolt would hang and not load properly. That and iOS is on TestFlight… not gonna work well for non tech enthusiasts who know how about it. That
I have a small server on Discord and would love to move it. But the people on it aren’t super tech savvy and the replacement will need to work. Plus, I have less desire to go from one centralized service to another, especially when the backup doesn’t work well. Wish Element would get it together with the phone app and make spaces appear as they do on the computer. That and stable call/video channels.
It would be nice to see a capable app built on matrix platform. Or just another capable platform that has a well working app. Just my two cents.
SchildiChat Next is a mini-fork of Element X with proper spaces support (and some other nice UI additions).
I say mini-fork as it’s basically just EleX with some UI patches - so it follows EleX actively.
Aaaaand this touches on the problem with matrix in general, no standard is properly followed, way too many forks with feature support all over the place
There’s only one standard, it has no forks. The discussion is about a filtering feature.
A lot of people don’t seem to respect spaces and communities - from my perspective it looks like the devs are currently pivoting to make the official client look and act more like Telegram/Signal/WhatsApp than Discord/IRC.
Your issue is that the dev team of EleX not prioritizing a feature you want.
If anything, this is a strength of an open source ecosystem: someone who agrees with you was able to, months ago, setup a fork that appeals to your work flow.
Try that with Discord, next time!
There is a single standard with no forks, I said not a single one followed. I run my own Matrix Home Server and use it frequently, there are a lot of different clients and there are a good number of them that do run their own features that are not exactly in Spec because one does not yet exist in the official spec. Stickers used to be a good example of that I remember when there were like three different clients Each of which implemented them in a different weird way until the spec finally landed on an implementation.
And even within this back there are some basic features not supported on certain clients and other such problems. I’m just saying it’s not an alternative to Discord and it will never be mainstream because it’s too confusing and frustrating from the perspective of a standard user.
Same concept that made bluesky get popular over mastodon, trying to find anything on Mastodon of interest is a chore because there’s no real Central spot to do everything the very nature of it is that it’s scattered to the winds, there’s also multiple apps available for Mobile on Mastodon Each of which have different layouts, different features, and normal people that just want to be able to find their topic of Interest can’t be bothered to deal with that
Yeah, all good points - especially the stuff relating to stickers (also, custom emojis).
Still, I’m hoping element gets their shit together and improves the default element apps (also brings Web/Desktop up to par with Mobile).
