Some time ago when Discord used Surveillance Services to face scan all their users a lot of possible alternatives where thrown around.
- It should be already hosted by someone
- have voice chat
- Be easy to sign up to so that i can convince people
We are using Fluxer, looks a lot like Discord, but is open source. It’s hosted, but you can also self-host.
Mumble + phpBB
Telepathy
Ventrilo. Hobbles away on my cane.
Signal, but I don’t play with randos, just people I know.
I’m very tired so I thought you were saying discord was gone and what would I do then and I was like “well. Me and twin game from adjacent rooms so we’d open the doors and yell but husband would be annoyed” and now I understand you mean new program.
I’d probably go back to ventrillo since I know it existed.
The ultimate start to a polycule.
web.fluxer.app is your best choice.
Element, or whatever Matrix client of choice if you prefer a different one.
Look at Mumble. It’s FOSS (Free Open Source Software)
Mumble lacks a ton of stuff that Discord has. There’s no persistent text chat, no screen sharing, no video. What it does have is really really easy administration.
It frustrates me that all these Discord alternatives are trying to do everything Discord does when even Discord can’t pull it off sustainably at scale. Discord has been in the “be really cool to attract users” phase, and now it’s morphing into the “Oh crap we actually have bills to pay” phase. That’s why you’re seeing ads now, and it’s only going to get worse.
I don’t want a billion concurrent users. I want a place for my small group of friends to hang out that isn’t hard to deploy or manage.
Mumble lacks a ton of stuff
You’re there to voice chat while gaming. It’s not a support forum and it’s not a wiki.
Why ‘systemd’ something simple?
You’re there to voice chat while gaming.
And while doing so, one might want to do one of the things they listed… being able to quickly share screens is a huge part of discord for my group, we’re always showing each other new games we’re playing or helping each other out on games we’re playing together
Yeah, and who ever sends text to people they want to game with?!?
The steam voice chat feature really improved and is very intuitive to use now. I’ll frequently use that.
We’ve been using steam for many years for our weekly gaming sessions. Can’t remember why we stopped using discord but it was way before all the photo ID requests. I definitely don’t miss discord downloading like 20 updates every week.
We use matrix
Discord is still king. People are way too invested.
Matrix is decent for me. Voice, video, and screen share, works well. Have not had issues with small friend groups
Matrix + Jitsi
I use matrix with a friend, matrix calls (the one that has the option for video) drop out on their own with no warning and the ring tone is very easy to miss, I wish there was anything to do about those two problems. Other than that it’s great, legacy calls seem more robust
I’ve tried Fluxer but it’s been a bit fiddly for me on Linux. It’s okay, voice chat works, but there are bugs for me with video chatting or screen-sharing. If it starts getting fixed, I’ll stick with it, otherwise I’m gonna keep looking.
Fluxer appears to be the most promising, though it is still very new and they are working furiously to get it up to par with a tiny dev team that consists of two (three?) people. Most basic features are quite usable now, though.
Stoat and Fluxer so far
Stoat desktop feels like it was just put in the oven, especially on Linux. It may get there someday, but I cannot recommend Stoat in good faith.
