- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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I’ve seen this article and I find it unhelpful.
Why it’s signal on this list? Signal is a sms replacement, not a discord replacement.
My research has found… Root - rootapp.com Stoat - stoat.chat Matrix - matrix.org
Root and Stoat appear to be the closest to Discord.
Do note that Root seems to be VC funded just like discord so that might just be the same thing happening later down the line.
Stoat isn’t federated so they also have the issue of running costs but they do seem to have that figured out already (currently donation funded, apparently some user friendly plans on how to deal with costs should they exceed the incoming donation)
Stoat doesn’t have screensharing yet, which is a dealbreaker for me at least
I’ve seen this mentioned multiple times even for Matrix (which does have Matrix Call). What do you mean with “screen sharing”? Just sharing your screen during a call?
Some of these don’t feel like real alternatives to me?
I want both the text chat parts of discord and the part where you can synchronously voice chat with screen share/camera share.
It seems like matrix is the closest thing, I hope it’s better than when I tried it in 2021 or 2022
signal is the dumbest thing they couldve put in the list. its like “top 10 minecraft alternatives; number 1, microsoft Word”
Yeah, discord has so many features that not everyone uses them. Open source proponents seem to prefer text communication so they ignore most of the shortcomings
Matrix has a new spec coming that will fix everything (they say). But last I checked it’s not finalised, and they have been working on it for years.
What I really need is realtime multi-party voice chat
Do any of these support that?
I mostly use discord for light coordination and online voice chat during games or activities.
Steam’s built in voice chat replaced discord for my group of friends years ago. It was rough at first, but it has improved a lot and now we dont have issues anymore.
Except when steam itself craps out for a while and you can’t even tell unless you keep the group chat/voice window open on 2nd screen.
Still better than discord tho
Technically, Signal, Rocket Chat, and Matrix all have multi-party voice chat built in. You probably won’t have a great time with it, and if you want video or screen sharing, you’ll have an even worse time.
Honestly just voice chat is all, I used to play SC2 with some sketchy apps that could do it… but 2026 feels like easy stuff got much harder.
What, no ranking for XMPP and IRC? They are by far the best alternatives in terms of openness, and have the advantage of being more focused on text-only and basic communication, securing the “do one thing and do it well” path. For things like voice chat there’s Mumble, but tbh I don’t know how is it doing.
I feel like XMPP is under rated, I used it in the past back when matrix was super new and not really production ready. I’m now revisiting them and matrix seems highly centralized in practice even if it was designed to be federated. There aren’t that many implementations and so many people use matrix.org as their homeserver. Definitely still thinking XMPP is the best option.
Depending on the client, XMPP can even replicate most Discord functionality. The Movim XMPP client can do group chats, group video calls, and I think screen sharing too.
Oooh I did not know that! It’s good to be able to catch up to the tech, thanks much!
IRC? That’s text only. It doesn’t even support viewing images, much less making voice or video calls. The majority isn’t going to install multiple clients to text and call.
That’s like proposing that people get rid of their smartphones to buy a separate camera, MP3 player, GPS device, and laptop.
One of the biggest reasons Discord took off for my group over mumble was the ease in inviting strangers on an MMO and they didn’t even need the app. Getting strangers into voice comms is kind of non-negotiable for difficult raiding when you need a sub.
That said, my group is used to streaming for each other and quite a few have nitro for sound board, profile stuff, etc, so it’d be a hard sell unless a more feature rich option comes along. I have the power to persuade them to join me on another platform, but only once and I’m not about to waste that chance until I know their needs are met. Steam got close, but it failed us when we used it for the brief days that Discord was down.
I’ll just be a teen account until there’s a suitable alternative, or do the stupid fake image of a guy trick the Brits taught me, lol.
Has anyone tried space bar?
I would like to throw Kiwi IRC into the mix, perhaps it would suffice for some people.
Alternatively, IRCCloud.
if matrix can get some of the remaining issues fixed I think it has a decent shot at taking over, but people will probably pick another “federated” proprietary app like with bluesky
No it doesn’t, matrix was designed by people with no concept of ux. It focuses on things that are technically correct but something average people won’t put up with. Like the forced verification of devices, normal people don’t care and don’t understand what that even is and will be annoyed that every time they try to log in they are prompted to insert a stupid key just so that they can see their chat history.
Doesn’t help that tons of the clients especially the web one can’t be bothered to remember being authenticated and you have to do it literally every time but even with that fix just having to do that in general is going to put people off.
Then there’s just a bunch of base protocol stuff that’s dumb the way they finally implemented custom emoji is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen and makes what should be a simple easy click to add a sticker and then use it turn into this complicated mess that nobody’s going to bother with. On a technical level it made sense sure but on a user experience level it makes no sense at all.
And I say this is someone that self-hosts basically anything I can get my hands on, I’ve got Seafile, immich, piped, jellyfin, microbin, among various others. I keep trying matrix and keep finding myself getting annoyed enough to stop using it
thats exactly what I mean though. the technical side is already great, if they can get the ux on par with discord (which is a very low bar) they’ll have a shot. thats something they could feasibly do in the short term.
I think you misunderstand. They are making technical decisions that are incompatible with ux decisions. In order to make a better user experience they would need to change how the protocol was made, thus undoing thing that they chose for technical reasons.
Like the way they chose to do the custom emoji makes sense on a technical level for a de Federated protocol but it also is fundamentally incompatible with a good user experience. Same with the forest verification of devices that’s bad ux even if it is technically better
Honestly I don’t think those things are that big of a deal. yeah it’s annoying, but very few people are going to be setting up on new devices often enough for the verification thing to matter (also it’s only needed for encrypted chats, which won’t be most of them) and most discord users either don’t care about emojis or use whatever is available on their server as part of the server. Just letting rooms (probably need a way for all rooms in a space to have them too) have a set of custom emojis tied to them should work for most people. for the people who do care about emojis and stickers, they can have any emoji or sticker they want.
I think the main issues are things like slow load times and trying to keep every room loaded at all times. the first can be alleviated by going to a less popular instance or by fixing the second. most people won’t trust instances other than the main one for a while bc they are new to the federated stuff. The second can be fixed by just not trying to load every room. you still need to check for new messages every so often but that doesn’t mean they all have to be loaded at all times. I’m also pretty sure you can turn of the verification thing in your instance account settings.
Thank you for sharing this!
(That’s the Discourse logo for anyone who’s wondering as well. Which … Yeah, FOSS devs definitely use that over Discord but most people chat on discord, right?)
lol you doofuses are never going to have anything good going for you based on this thread #XMPP
