Matrix using the sable client is I think the smoothest alternative so far. It’s not owned by some shitty corporation, you can self host it or use one of the many existing instances, you can do voice chat and screen sharing, it’s easy to add custom emojis and stickers.
Unlike most other alternatives it’s federated which I think is crucial to actually scaling with more users and being resistant to abuse by a single host.
Yeah I’m not sure why many are saying matrix is bad. My friends and I have been using it for months now and its been great. Granted, its only 4 of us. A large 20 person server may not fare as well.
It’s buggy, doesn’t properly support screen sharing, doesn’t properly support voice calls, and all the available clients are hit or miss over which features they have. I personally think it’s harder to switch over from Discord to Matrix than from Reddit to Lemmy. Matrix sucks, but that’s probably because it’s built for businesses organizations to use, not common users like us. For that reason, I still think we need a real replacement to Discord built to be federated from the beginning.
I help moderate a medium sized server with lots of people and it’s nice! It’s public so this means we do have to care about moderation tools like draupnir which you probably don’t need to do for your personal server (unless it’s also public)
Screen sharing support has been added to Stoat but it’s disabled on the main server so you have to self host to use it, but self hosting Stoat is a pain because the main instance is hardcoded into the clients, so you have to edit their source code and recompile them. There are also no notification sounds for some reason.
I still use it though. Much better than having all my data sold. It would also be nice if they could add a Signal-like donation system where you donate some minuscule amount of money monthly and get a small badge to indicate your support. Something as simple as that motivates people to donate, no need for paywalling the most basic stuff like Fluxer and Discord.
Fluxer is not federated though. If you plan on only interacting with your friends who were willing to join your instance that’s an alright solution, but if you want to interact with other people on other servers then you’re going to need to use their main instance.
Havent tried Fluxer, but Stoat has no screensharing and mobile cant voice chat. Plus they dont have a google-free version for Android, so I cant use the android mobile app.
Clerotri is the google free client for android (on the Stoat/Revolt wiki they have a list of 3rd party clients), and it’s recommended if you’re using GrapheneOS.
As for mobile voice chat, the strange thing is Clerotri has it while the official app doesn’t.
Another comment mentioned the self-hosting requirement to screenshare (because of presumed costs)
Fluxer looked like it was ai coded before the hype for it got it enough funding for a code refactor they’re doing right now. It’d be nice if it stayed around long term and became successful enough to be sustainable though.
I feel like I’ve been caught by the hyperbole here, but there are discord alternatives with all those features.
Matrix using the sable client is I think the smoothest alternative so far. It’s not owned by some shitty corporation, you can self host it or use one of the many existing instances, you can do voice chat and screen sharing, it’s easy to add custom emojis and stickers.
Unlike most other alternatives it’s federated which I think is crucial to actually scaling with more users and being resistant to abuse by a single host.
Yeah I’m not sure why many are saying matrix is bad. My friends and I have been using it for months now and its been great. Granted, its only 4 of us. A large 20 person server may not fare as well.
It’s buggy, doesn’t properly support screen sharing, doesn’t properly support voice calls, and all the available clients are hit or miss over which features they have. I personally think it’s harder to switch over from Discord to Matrix than from Reddit to Lemmy. Matrix sucks, but that’s probably because it’s built for businesses organizations to use, not common users like us. For that reason, I still think we need a real replacement to Discord built to be federated from the beginning.
Screen share and voice work perfectly on element x and commet. Why is yours not working?
I help moderate a medium sized server with lots of people and it’s nice! It’s public so this means we do have to care about moderation tools like draupnir which you probably don’t need to do for your personal server (unless it’s also public)
For anyone interested: such alternatives are, for example, Fluxer (easier) or I think Stoat (more control as of now).
Screen sharing support has been added to Stoat but it’s disabled on the main server so you have to self host to use it, but self hosting Stoat is a pain because the main instance is hardcoded into the clients, so you have to edit their source code and recompile them. There are also no notification sounds for some reason.
I still use it though. Much better than having all my data sold. It would also be nice if they could add a Signal-like donation system where you donate some minuscule amount of money monthly and get a small badge to indicate your support. Something as simple as that motivates people to donate, no need for paywalling the most basic stuff like Fluxer and Discord.
TBF fluxer doesn’t paywall anything if you host it yourself (since you’re obviously not tied to their infrastructure)
Fluxer is not federated though. If you plan on only interacting with your friends who were willing to join your instance that’s an alright solution, but if you want to interact with other people on other servers then you’re going to need to use their main instance.
Havent tried Fluxer, but Stoat has no screensharing and mobile cant voice chat. Plus they dont have a google-free version for Android, so I cant use the android mobile app.
I recommend Game-Vox
Clerotri is the google free client for android (on the Stoat/Revolt wiki they have a list of 3rd party clients), and it’s recommended if you’re using GrapheneOS.
As for mobile voice chat, the strange thing is Clerotri has it while the official app doesn’t.
Another comment mentioned the self-hosting requirement to screenshare (because of presumed costs)
It’s fair that you can’t screenshare on the official one, it consume a lot of resources, i wonder if maybe doing P2P screenshare would help
Fluxer looked like it was ai coded before the hype for it got it enough funding for a code refactor they’re doing right now. It’d be nice if it stayed around long term and became successful enough to be sustainable though.