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 Mastodon founder, Eugen Rochko, has just announced that “We’ve moved our internal communications from Discord to Zulip at Mastodon”.
https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/116041405748460511
Zulip is probably more focused toward work than TTRPGs, but it can’t hurt to try it. (I haven’t tried it personally, yet.) It is self-hostable.
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.
element.io uses Matrix. It’s not bad.
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.
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
Check out https://stoat.chat/, it’s the closest self hostable group communications platform to Discord.
Is there a significant benefit over matrix?
Honestly the name choice adds difficulty in getting friends to take it seriously. Why did they pick “stoat”
This whole “FOSS names are bad” sounds like a Mccarthyism sysop by this point. Like, really, who is pushing that crap?
you mean unlike the tools discord has replaced, such as “mumble”, “ventrilo”, “roger wilco” and “trillian”?
Discord never replaced mumble. The two are in different circles.
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.
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.
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.
What do you meeaaan? Stoats are fucking adorable!
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
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.
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 ?
Where is the documentation for self-hosting it?
Check their GitHub. Although it looks like GitHub is having issues right now.
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.
Bummer that it doesn’t have voice chat yet in the self hosted version. Hopefully soon - I would probably switch if they had that.
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.
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
That doesn’t sound like it is necessary for private chat, the only thing I really use it for. Would be nice to have an alternative all the same
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
Matrix is pretty lightweight if you use something like Conduit or its spinoffs for a homeserver instead of Synapse, which is very heavy.
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
Jitsi is great as a Skype/Zoom replacement. It’s not a ‘room’ on a server, but voice and video chats are stable and fast.
Yeah, depending on what it’s used for it can do well. If it’s for scheduled calls, like with a weekly tabletop game, it can definitely work well. If it’s for the more casual pop in/out that happens on a lot of Discords it’s worse. I just don’t know of a replacement for that aside Matrix
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.
Matrix?
TeamSpeek or Mumble.
Both have excellent voice chat.
I would take a look at TeamSpeak or Matrix.
Of the two Matrix is probably the closest to Discord.
TeamSpeak 6 maybe. Don’t know where they’re up to on it at the moment kinda lost the thread a while ago.
@Vaggumon check out https://stoat.chat/
@Vaggumon mattermost es bastante similar a discord. Con todo y los canales y roles y bots
Haven’t found one that’s as good yet personally…
