Mastodawn

RIP Discord: Self-Hosted Discord Alternatives Tested (TeamSpeak, Stoat, Fluxer, Matrix, & More)

https://lemmy.world/post/44336221

RIP Discord: Self-Hosted Discord Alternatives Tested (TeamSpeak, Stoat, Fluxer, Matrix, & More) - Lemmy.World

I mostly lurk here, and I know we’ve had this discussion come up a number of times since Discord’s age verification changes were announced, but I figured this video offers value for the walkthrough and comparative analysis. Like me, the video authors aren’t seasoned self-hosters, and I’ve still got a lot to learn. Stoat and Fluxer both look appealing to me for my needs, but Stoat seemingly needs self-hosted servers to route through their master server (unless I’m missing something stupid) and I replicated the 404 for Fluxer’s self-hosting documentation seen in the video, so it’s looking like I’m leaning toward a Matrix server of some kind. Hopefully everyone looking for the Discord exit ramp is closer to finding it after this video.

Luminous5481 "Lawless Heathen" [they/them]4d ago

Fluxer is of particular interest to the folks here at AN. We’ve talked a bit about exploring it once they finish work on federation.

ZealotOfLuna 4d ago

That’s a primary focus of the app after stability. The dev was able to hire on a co-developer, so hoping to see the project accelerate

lambalicious 4d ago

I hear Snikket makes it really easy to host XMPP (aka Jabber).

Yes, but it isn’t a Discord replacement, but rather a WhatsApp replacement.

movim.eu is xmpp based and might be more suitable as a Discord replacement, but to be honest it isn’t quite there yet if you are looking mainly for a voice chat app.

Movim – Responsive web-based cross-platform XMPP client

Movim is a kickass distributed blogging and messaging platform built on the industry-standard XMPP protocol

lambalicious 4d ago

Hmmmm voice chat eh?

Well then it’s time to recommend Mumble!

But then it’s not chat anymore. Or screenshare.

There are many good tools that solve individual issues. But Discord solved many of these issues in one tool, and that also has its charme.

The project I posted here yesterday focuses on providing text, voice and screen share. My goal is to provide an easy to host tool for those three things. Check it out if it’s just those things you want in a single package.

lambalicious 4d ago

That’s precisely why they have to be resisted and/or we have to look for alternatives that Do One Thing Well. Among many other issues, the networking effect issue with EverythingApps is quite double-faceted in that, because they do everything, their “weight” not only acts as gilded cages to prevent people from leaving, but also to prevent developers, working on their spare time, from developing something that can be reasonably understood as an “alternative” (because the alternative has to also Do Everything).

It’s basically playing a loser game to lose, see eg.: Mozilla always at best playing catch-up to Google, or why we can’t seem to move from BloatedWebWithReact to something like Gopher (or even make a proper Gopher 2.0).

All that said, I feel like XMPP and Matterbridge are approaching this from the right perspective. Just implement a global communication protocol and leave to platform makers (or platform users) the task of bridging from and to whatever directions they want.

A “do everything” app is overkill. I am not a fan of many features Discord implemented over time. But the initial offering of having text chat, voice chat, video chat in one app makes sense. It’s just super convenient to switch the communication type depending on what you are currently doing, without having to onboard and switch between tools.

It’s also hard to draw a line, if you want to go “do one thing well”. Mumble also includes text chat, and user management, ACLs, etc. … for text chat one could use IRC, for user management there are IdPs, and so on. XMPP also doesn’t just do “one thing”. The “X” (= extensible) is heavily used and there are extensions for all kinds of things. Some of the big messengers out there are (or were) using XMPP under the hood (just without federation).

Jesus Islas 4d ago

warmaster 4d ago

It comes down to Fluxer and Stoat. Or just Stoat if you dislike Fluxer’s AI-assisted development.

One thing is clear, both are currently working great and are the closest thing to Discord’s core features.

ampersandrew 4d ago

Did you run into the same problems I did with self-hosting? And if not, how did you avoid them?

Are you talking about self hosting for fluxer? They explicitly state in their documentation they don’t want people using the current version because they’re doing a rewrite, so you should wait.

ampersandrew 4d ago

Yes, Fluxer’s self hosting documentation 404s, and Stoat seems to still rely on a central server, which isn’t self hosted enough for my needs. It’s cool that both of them are looking good in the near future, but I want something I can start using in the next few months.

Honestly if you’re that worried about it, I’d just wait and not use anything. Instead of wasting time trying to find a product that probably won’t get better, you can wait and get Fluxer when they make it ready.

Or you could pull stoat and modify the code yourself.

other_cat 3d ago

When did you last check the self-hosting documentation? I just poked my head into it and there’s a big post talking about why they’d rather people wait on self-hosting.

That said if you liked Fluxer but are not satisfied with it right now (which is completely understandable. It’s in beta, after all, not a finished product), I’d say check back in 2-3 months. I would bet that the self-hosting is ready to go by then, judging by the rate of how other things have been updating.

ampersandrew 3d ago

I believe it was from their GitHub, which is where GamersNexus checked as well. I did subsequently find their blog post. I’m new to self-hosting, and it is taking me longer to learn some crucial pieces of it than I thought, so by the time I’m ready for it, self-hosting for Fluxer may be up again. That said, the only thing I really need Fluxer to do that it looks like Element doesn’t do is screen sharing a game window, and I’m preparing to be able to set up Owncast or something to stream to if that’s the only thing my Discord replacement is bad at, so Fluxer doesn’t have to be my only option.

other_cat 3d ago

Welcome to self-hosting! I hope you have fun learning stuff. I’m still kind of on the lower-end of the intermediate scale myself, so I’m hoping they’ll be using dockers and docker-compose once the self-host docs are up.

Right now I do think it has screen share, but it doesn’t allow you to share audio at the same time (known bug). Bummer for me too.

I’m just glad that Discord pushed back their age verification stuff for at least a few months so there’s room for Stoat, Fluxer, etc to get some work done.

ampersandrew 3d ago

Yeah, same. And I’m currently scratching my head on Docker right now. I downloaded a Jellyfin build that was not labeled unstable but is still considered an unstable version, and go figure, everything is behaving correctly now that I’ve actually identified the latest stable version. But I’ve also got three containers, one of them a bespoke version of Jellyfin provided by my NAS manufacturer, and of the other two containers, I can’t figure out yet how to upgrade in place so that it uses the same users and settings from the other container. So that’s where I’m at, haha. After that, I need to figure out how and why SSL certs work and how to set that up, and then I’ve got a lead on exposing that to the internet via WireGuard, a cheap VPS, and a cheap domain name. If I can get all that working, I figure I’ll be ready for hosting something besides Jellyfin on my local network only. And yes, the clock is ticking until Discord becomes a problem.

It’s definitely going to be one of these two. Matrix and XMPP are just too much for casual users, and there’s no one client for either of them which supports all of Discord’s core features.

Out of those two, Fluxer feels like the better choice right now, but I do wish they’d take a stronger stance against LLMs. Stoat feels clunkier, buggier, and feels like it’s getting left behind.

littleomid 4d ago

Element supports all of discords core features.

Last I checked it doesn’t keep channels in a server organized and always sorts by recent activity. I may be mistaken but I don’t believe it supported screenshare audio yet either

littleomid 3d ago

These are core features? For me core feature is channels, audio/video call and screen share and element can do all of that.

parzival 4d ago

I feel like comet has all of discords features, no?

I’ve had the most people switch over to element (a full 2 people plus myself)

iamthetot 4d ago

Damn it this is the first I’m hearing about Fluxer’s AI development.

AeronMelon 4d ago

Seeing Teamspeak outlive Discord just keeps making me laugh.

ampersandrew 4d ago

Teamspeak lived long enough to see an exodus from Discord, but that doesn’t mean Discord is dying.

@aeronmelon @ampersandrew crazy world isn't it?

tehn00bi 4d ago

What’s wrong with team speak? It was a good service circa 2006. And I don’t see how it is significantly less valuable to the “gaming” community. I know it isn’t as feature rich and discord has evolved a lot from its “gamer” origins. I see it used for all kinds of community’s as a catch all system. I guess that is good, but I don’t get much value from it being a centralized point of community building.

Sir. Haxalot 4d ago

Imo the biggest problem with Teamspeak is that it still requires an active connection to the server at all time.. So unless your computer is on with the app opened 24/7 you may miss messages. That may or may not be an issue, but you may miss messages that your friends send to the group when you aren’t actively online.

Frankly the UI of TeamSpeak is ageing as well, and there is value in for instance being able to simply attach a screenshot directly in a Discord chat without having to upload it to some external service.

themachine 4d ago

Check out the Teamspeak6 beta. I don’t know about offline messages but it addresses all your other complaints. I moved to it from Mumble somewhat recently and have been very happy with it.

early_riser 4d ago

Discord is an evolutionary culdesac if we’re talking about its role as a forum killer. It’s terrible for long term information storage and retrieval compared to the more permanent, and search engine indexed, forums it replaced. It’s a never ending waterfall of chat messages that’s hard to search, so the same questions keep coming up again and again.

I tried asking a question on Blender Guru’s discord about his doughnut tutorial, on the channel specifically meant for questions about the doughnut tutorial, and it flew off the top of the screen like a barrel going over Niagara Falls, never to be seen again.

FiniteBanjo 1d ago

It used to be packaged with Overwolf, that was the dealbreaker for me back then.

xvertigox 4d ago

Now I’m just waiting for Ventrilo and the All Seeing Eye to come back… Maybe one day I’ll be able to play CoD1 mp and have weekly scrims again : (

TORFdot0 4d ago

Don’t know if you are interested in COD UO but we have biweekly pugs every Tuesday and Sunday evening. I think the cod1 scene is pretty much like us. CoD2 seems to be the active community with a running league with like 9 teams or so.

Trying to build the community up on these old games

xvertigox 3d ago

I’d def jam UO but I’m down under and playing with ~250 ping is too shit for cod :( thanks for the invite tho, hf in ur games <3

TORFdot0 3d ago

I remember the good old days of the 300 pingers either being people on dial up or Aussies getting a morning game in. Yeah it’s be hard to scrim with that ping for sure. Thanks for sharing the game date URL. It’s a nice little site, we’ve used it a few times

xvertigox 2d ago

How do you guys organize games? Discord I assume? I might be keen to jump into a pug at a weird time sometime.

TORFdot0 2d ago

Yes, pretty much every active server on UO has one. This one is ours if you feel the fancy to hop on sometime (I go by VE_AG_RA on UO [long story])

Join the COD UO NA COMPETITIVE Discord Server!

Check out the COD UO NA COMPETITIVE community on Discord - hang out with 185 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

Discord

iamthetot 4d ago

“outlive” Discord is quite the exaggeration. Let’s not pretend that we’re not a vocal minority here, and that Discord will keep trucking just fine.

early_riser 4d ago

Even if the age verification wasn’t a thing, I think the enshittification would set in eventually.

I hope we get encrypted hosting sites that can help people do easy automated setups. A bunch of people want something that is just create a server and go. I know several discord admins that aren’t really hardware and self hosting literate.

I like the alternatives, but they mean nothing with being federated.

For me it’s federation and encryption. Yeah obviously, if I’m in a public space then encryption means fuck all, but for messages between me and close friends I want encryption.

I agree with the public spaces. Just put https and we’re good.

The worst part of Matrix is needing to copy recovery key onto each new device or install, or else you will lose access to all your messages in public servers. Its been discouraging and I rarely use Matrix because of this inconvenience, but I really want too – it’s too exhausting and time consuming. And I lose track of conversations if I lost the key, which isn’t practical if I’m working on something.

Svinhufvud 4d ago

I have tried XMPP, Matrix and now I’ve settled on Mumble.

Me and my fellows mostly just need a voice room or a couple to sit in, and Mumble does that best out of these three, in my opinion.

I recommend giving Mumble a try as it is super easy to set up and use. Users don’t need to even create accounts to join servers.

Lettuce eat lettuce 4d ago

I’ve got a Mumble server running on a little Linux container in my home lab.

Easy to set up and configure, very stable. Nothing special, it does what it is supposed to do, be a low latency, stable voip system, and it does great.

In order for people to connect to it you have to give them your home IP right? The mumble server’s IP is your home IP?

pemptago 3d ago

Afaik you’d have to open a port and port forward for that to work, and you’d have to update every time your ip changes, unless you have a domain linked to it. There’s lots of other configurations, too: VPN/tailscale or equivalent onto your home network, a vps, reverse proxy, etc. I’ve yet to decide how to access from outside my home. Still tinkering locally, but mumble would be fun to try one day.

I just use my (static) IP directly with port forwards on my router.

Sure, I get hundreds of login attempts every day, but that’s just life on the internet. Just secure your stuff and you’re fine.

Yes, like with everything else you self host.

You could also use some paid service like Cloudflare if you want to hide it for some reason.

But generally people are overly protective of their home IP. What’s the danger? DDoS?

People know my physical address but my house hasn’t been burned down yet…

Lettuce eat lettuce 3d ago

I use Tailscale and share out that server machine’s tailscale IP with just my gaming buddies.

But if you wanna live dangerously, you can port forward from your router to your internal mumble server.

I use Tailscale

Per their website, it appears to be a free VPN? tailscale.com/pricing?plan=personal

Yet they have Mullvad (another VPN) as an optional addon? That’s confusing.

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Lettuce eat lettuce 2d ago

No, Tailscale is an overlay network. In it’s simplest form, it can act as a VPN. But it does much more than that.

Tailscale installs a virtual network device and allocates IP addresses to any device you install it on and sign in with your tailnet. Think of it as a virtual meshed LAN that runs on top of your physical network.

Tailscale becomes your control plane and provides advanced access control options for all your users and devices.

So it’s only a VPN if you purchase the Mullvad addon?

And without the Mullvad option, it’s not really a VPN, but rather a way to get a different IP?

Lettuce eat lettuce 1d ago

The Mullvad integration allows you to use Mullvad as your VPN for internet browsing while still being on your tailnet.

So normally, running two different VPN services can cause a bunch of problems, if it even works at all. Tailscale’s Mullvad integration fixes that.

Tailscale by itself is an overlay network. It’s literally a second network that your computer is connected to, but instead of it being a physical network with wires, switches, and routers, it’s a virtual network, a network that runs as software.

So imagine your computer right now at home. You plug into your router, and you have a local IP address, something like 192.168.1.20 right? If you run ipconfig on Windows or ip a on Linux, you’ll see your network adaptors listed with what their current IP address is. So if you’re running Windows, you’ll see your physical network adaptor listed with the IP address of 192.168.1.20

When you install Tailscale on that computer and log into your account, then run that command again, you’ll see a new network device listed, and it will have a totally different IP address, like 100.89.113.14

That is your Tailnet IP address, it works just like your “normal” IP address, but instead of it being a physical Ethernet adaptor on your motherboard and plugged into your home router, it is a virtual adaptor (software) running on your computer, connected to the Tailscale network, which has servers all around the world.

When you install Tailscale on a new device, say an old computer that you are using as a Minecraft server. That computer will get a new IP address on your tailnet, say 100.94.65.132

Because both of those machines were added by you to your own Tailnet, they can see and talk to each other by default. Meaning you could run a ping command from your home computer to your Minecraft server’s Tailscale IP, and it will respond.

Because this runs on the internet through Tailscale’s servers, you can do this from anywhere. That’s the “VPN” type functionality you are talking about. No matter where your home computer is, you can still access your Minecraft server because it is on your Tailnet, just as if it were still plugged into your router right next to you.

This is how I access my entire home lab from anywhere in the world. For example, I have a Jellyfin media server (like Plex) that I have a bunch of movies, TV shows, anime on. It’s running Tailscale and is on my Tailnet. I have Tailscale installed on my Android smartphone too.

So if I am staying at a hotel in another state, or visiting my family on the other side of the country, and I want to watch a movie or show that I have on my server all the way back home. I just run the Tailscale app on my phone, then open the Jellyfin app and I see all my home media right there on my phone and can watch it flawlessly. Even though I am at my parent’s house, on a totally different internet connection, 500 miles away from my home.

Mumble is nice, but it hasn’t changed much since the time people explicitly moved away from it to Discord, so why would they go back it it now?

Svinhufvud 4d ago

Probably nothing has really changed. And I am not claiming it to be a Discord killer, as it really only does the voice rooms well.

But I am recommending it if you and your friends just need a voice room or two (as me and my friends do).

early_riser 4d ago

Mumble isn’t requiring you to submit your ID.