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?
Yes, enshittification of Discord has started a while ago, and it’s becoming worse.
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.
Dito (Synapse server), Element for desktop app and fruitphones, Shildichat for android (its lighter and has an adorable turtle as a mascot).
And seconding the voice coms, the VOIP relay server is a huge pain to set up, same with the registration page. My nerd herd hosts a few services that federated to share services and the admin group just issues people accounts.
TLDR: no… Were not using discord anymore, we have discord at home.
nerd herd
I understood that reference!
I’ve heard positive things about Dito, if I was doing it over again I think I’d start there
Hello Chuck.
yes i second matrix. it’s different from discord in a lot of ways, but it’s still a pretty seamless transition. for anyone who wants to host matrix, i recommend the continuwuity homeserver software. it’s much easier to host than synapse and is significantly faster for 99% of use cases
if you’re just trying use matrix, i prefer cinny over element for the client. cinny’s ui is also very similar to discord’s and it handles space/room grouping very intuitively. there’s also fluffychat (less feature rich) and schildichat (element fork), among others. however, element is currently the only client which fully supports voice chat
for instances, i recommend choosing something other than matrix.org. right now, matrix is barely decentralized because the vast majority of users choose matrix.org, which isn’t great. also matrix.org collects a lot of data and requires more information to register than most servers. some other good public instances are:
- tchncs.de
- unredacted.org
- catgirl.cloud
- calitabby.net
there are also many, many smaller public instances, but it’s probably better to choose a relatively big one for moderation reasons. a lot of people think matrix is dead or no one uses it, but there are plenty of active communities if you know where to look
for your friends who refuse to quit discord for some reason, matrix’s ecosystem also has lots of bridges. if you’re willing to self host, i recommend out of your element. the only caveat is that it doesn’t support e2ee rooms
If OP wants voice and video chat like they say they’d have to host synapse and use element afaik.i don’t think any of the other home servers support matrix calling. Cinny and fluffychat don’t support voice or video calls. Fluffychat has it as an “option” but it’s currently broken last time I tried it. Schildi chat might work for voice and video since it’s an element fork. I’ve not tried it so I don’t know for sure.
element call is a standalone service (call.element.io) that the client just integrates really well. since it’s not actually part of the homeserver deployment, it should work fine even without synapse. that said, it means traffic passes through a third party server unless element call and the client are also self hosted. but yes, you’re right that other clients currently do not support calling. luckily, cinny is relatively close to merging a PR that adds it
My project for the week is getting Matrix and Continuwuity set up. Half-hearted initial attempts have been unsuccessful with the Continuwuity container just in constant restarts.
Not bad is a good description. It’s not fun to use compared to other chat software.
Check out https://stoat.chat/, it’s the closest self hostable group communications platform to Discord.
Just a fair warning in reply to this that the self-hosted version of Stoat doesn’t currently have voice chat. It’s an open issue that’s currently paused until they can finish their rework.
If you have the skill for it, it seems like you can patch work the existing voice chat back in, but it’s not part of their initial setup and there’s no instructions on how to do so properly
Well that seems like a fairly big deal.
Link to their voice chat implementatoon.
Looks like you can enable it on self hosted version. Probably worth someone trying it out personally. Before giving up on stoat.
sadly, it’s a little more complex than just enabling it. The supported self host deployment uses docker, and the docker containers that are available don’t contain the interfaces for voice or video calling as they are not up to date.
If I understand it right, to enable it would mean you need to either pull the source yourself and run it off of docker, or make a custom docker image using a version of stoat web that contains the ability to do voice calls.
reading the draft of the linked issue, it looks like the author isn’t doing voice call for the reason that they don’t know the proper way to integrate it into the docker image.
So to answer it: yes it looks like you can use voice servers on the current self hosted model, but you can’t use pre-existing docker images, and it will require you to manually add the new web UI in and patch where needed.
Turns out they also don’t support federation or e2ee. If those are things you care about.
Is there a docker-free build you can either install and mod to re-enable voice, or use to mod the docker blobs in accordance ?
I’ve been using it since it was called Revolt and quite like it, albeit I’ve never used the voice feature. My group doesn’t really have the need for it, but I can see it being a deal breaker for the self-hosted version.
Honestly the name choice adds difficulty in getting friends to take it seriously. Why did they pick “stoat”
Nowadays everyone accepted the name “Discord” but I think it’s a pretty poor choice of branding too.
A communication app called Discord is pretty weird too.
A stoat is a pretty cool animal.
I think without prior knowledge of any voice chat Discord would probably rate worse in perception than Stoat.
Nowadays everyone accepted the name “Discord” but I think it’s a pretty poor choice of branding too.
A terrible name for an app meant to facilitate communication. Always baffled me. But the name is so widely recognized that nobody thinks twice about it.
I always thought Noosphere would make a cool name for a Discord replacement, especially if it incorporates a way to permanently catalog the knowledge accrued by the community, say as a built-in wiki. That might actually make it viable as a support platform.
No clue! It was revolt before. I think they had trademark issues with that name. What’s wrong with stoat?
I was wondering why I want getting any updates, checked thegithub a few months ago and found out they rebranded. Haven’t had a chance to try the latest version out yet
Personally, I associate stoats with Dwarf Fortress. And much butchering thereof.
you mean unlike the tools discord has replaced, such as “mumble”, “ventrilo”, “roger wilco” and “trillian”?
Mumble is a verb like chat but what the fuck has a stoat got anything to do chatting?
now do the other ones
Do them yourself and you want to copy all those failed apps, lmao.
Mumble is great and I still use it. None of those are failed apps.
Not every app seeks to rake in teenagers’ parents’ money with shit like premium emojis.
So, where are all the posts saying, ‘self-hosted ventrilo?’
Discord never replaced mumble. The two are in different circles.
for some, yeah. depends on your use case.
Unironically yes
soundn like a problem with your friends then. who doesn’t love a stoat?
I know, it’s picky lol. I’m still considering it as the replacement for my discord groups (also checking out Element/Matrix). The average users aren’t going to be up for swapping around a lot of platforms, so I am hoping to make one big push on the platform of choice. “Revolt” would have gotten less “wtf is that, how do you even spell it?” than “Stoat”
for what it’s worth matrix has worked well for us. it’s apparently a bitch to set up though.
This whole “FOSS names are bad” sounds like a Mccarthyism sysop by this point. Like, really, who is pushing that crap?
What do you meeaaan? Stoats are fucking adorable!
seems like they had a decent name ‘revolt’ but got some cease and desist and didn’t resist and decided to switch.
Stoats are awesome.
Is there a significant benefit over matrix?
From what I can tell, the only benefit is that the platform is close to the Discord experience. So people migrating to Stoat would feel right at home.
But there’s no federation, no e2ee, apparently it’s difficult to get voice setup if you self host…
Matrix has it’s issues too. Goup chat e2ee is not good. No one uses it. But at least they’ve got federation.
https://continuwuity.org/ seems like a decent server to run if you want to run a matrix server.
Where is the documentation for self-hosting it?
Check their GitHub. Although it looks like GitHub is having issues right now.
has anyone tried their iOS client? from their description it seems like it’s less mature than the android version, kinda concerning as my friend group has some iphone users.
There another thread about discord requiring a face scan next month,so I think alternatives might start getting pushed.
Such as https://stoat.chat/
Edit: Not sure you can self-host it, but it does have a back end server listed in it’s source code with a docker, however it might just be for code testing.
Right RTFM… https://github.com/stoatchat/self-hosted yes you can self-hosted it.
To create an invite you:
# drop into mongo shell docker compose exec database mongosh # create the invite use revolt db.invites.insertOne({ _id: "enter_an_invite_code_here" })That’s pretty jank.
Also - I’m getting pretty fed-up with self-hosting documentation that assumes very specific environments and goes into detailed configuration for that environment. Don’t tell me how to setup a server and how to enable/configure SSH and setup UFW as part of setting up your software. Just tell me how to setup your software and what ports it uses.
True on the invite, but you know I bet it wouldn’t take much to fix that code wise.
Having built a bit of software in multiple enviorns, I feel you on the very specific requirements… But it is a bitch to write something that works for all of them. It should be a damn site easier to install it though, especially if it’s docker.
Wait, requiring a face scan of everyone?? I know they started doing that as an age verification thing for some people, but everyone?
Your correction is accurate. I should have been more specific.
Discord announced on Monday that it’s rolling out age verification on its platform globally starting next month, when it will automatically set all users’ accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience unless they demonstrate that they’re adults.
Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won’t be able to speak in Discord’s livestream-like “stage” channels, and will see content filters for any content Discord detects as graphic or sensitive. They will also get warning prompts for friend requests from potentially unfamiliar users, and DMs from unfamiliar users will be automatically filtered into a separate inbox.
Less a correction, more a question. I’d heard about them doing it in some countries, I didn’t see the post where it was going to be international.
Yeah. Solid chance I’m dropping the few discord-related things I do use here soon.
sigh
Bummer that it doesn’t have voice chat yet in the self hosted version. Hopefully soon - I would probably switch if they had that.
Back in my day, (shakes cane), Teamspeak and Ventrillo were the big voice chat platforms/tools. Both have text chat and channels/rooms; but their focus is voice chat for gaming.
Ventrillo.
Dammit, son, makin’ me feel old now
Roger Wilco
Hahahahaha
I’ll be over here crying in the corner.
Next you’re gonna mention ICQ
Wow you invoked a name I hadn’t thought of in a very long time. Shit did I use that playing Unreal Tournament, StarCraft or was it late enough to be WoW?
Edit: final release 2003, guess it was unreal.
What’s that you say? IRC?
Matrix hoster here.
I would recommend Matrix as it has pretty much everything, including cross platform clients, threads, voice/video calls, screensharing, spaces (aka servers), federation and E2EE. Matrix also has bridges for Discord and pretty much every other service so this could ease transition…
But self hosting requires reading the docs and having some in depth knowledge and understanding as it can be quite complex.
I would recommend just creating a Matrix account on one of the common global servers and testing it.
If you want to self-host there are some pre-defined setups available (example) but I would still recommend to bring at least 5-10 hours.
Regarding operations: It’s really resilient and barely ever breaks and also doesn’t need a lot of resources. A 1-2vCPU server with under 1GB RAM server is enough for less than 10 people.
You se knowledgeable on this, so I hope you’ll allow me to ask this.
I don’t know anything about Discord, but I selfhost the Mattermost chat system for my family. They, too, are narrowing the free tier.
Can Matrix replace Mattermost for a family? Several separate “rooms” for various topics, plus 1-to-1 chats.
If it’s just chatting with your use case: definetly yes
may i ask which homeserver and client you use? it seems like synapse and element is not the best choice especially for small number of people.
synapse and element/schildi-chat work quite well for me :)
On mobile the newer Element X clients usually lack some features (like calls) but you can use them quite well for chatting.
E2EE group chats on matrix seems to be a huge problem still. I look forward to their MLS implementation. Hopefully that fixes a lot of these UX issues.
TeamSpeek or Mumble.
Both have excellent voice chat.
Teamspeak still requires a license above a small user size, but has multiple clients that can accomodate different target audicences. The TS3 client still looks like it did back in the windows 7 days and the TS5 client is just copying discords homework (Not a clue what happend to 4 and I believe 6 is under development). Both use the same server backend and database structure so both work with one server and different user expirences.
Mumble is still the gold standard for handling large user bases (there is a reason big EvE Online alliances use mumble). It will take longer to set up, the configuration is handled by the server, not through authorized user accounts like TS.
Matrix?
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
https://github.com/spacebarchat/spacebarchat
Literally reverse engineered discord, made open source.
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.
i also have a mumble server but every once in a while we need streaming. what is your rtmp setup? i am thinking of mediamtx, but am annoyed by having to post the link to the stream every time and everyone needs to resize windows manually to fit all on ome screen.
Nothing fancy, I just run this docker image which allows streaming to via OBS, and we can watch the streams with VLC. I’m sure there are better ways to do it but that works well enough for us. Do note that a few seconds of latency is to be expected with RTMP.
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 still use IRC. There are now modern web clients like The Lounge or Convos that can display/share images in the channels, keep history and push notifications. Apparently Convos can do video chat but I never tried it. Unfortunately I’m not aware of screen sharing features for any of these.
So on a very simple setup, you need an IRC server, then install and connect one of those clients to your server, and use them through a web browser, either on a computer or on a phone.
It’s obviously not entirely Discord-like, but it is a simple way to chat and share images.
Matrix is an option but it’s slow and breaks all the time. I’m a big fan of XMPP myself but good luck convincing anyone else to make an account 😔
Dont knock matrix for being slow, it updates just as fast as anyone else’s network speed is and it is focused on encryption and security. Given [gestures broadly to everything these days] people moving away from major platforms should really take into account their digital footprint and privacy.
That’s fair
could you recommend a good xmpp setup? i heard good things about snikket, maybe something else too?
I’m running Prosody and it was easy to set up and the docs are good.
