The developer team at Discord released a new engineering blog post yesterday (December 8th) detailing lots of fixes, along with some Linux improvements. As one of the most popular chat apps in the world, it’s good to see their support of Linux continue to get better over time.
Why are we saying Linux PCs AND steam deck? The steam deck is just a Linux PC. Unless custom work was done for it?
Everyone else in this comments section didn’t read the article lmao, it’s because they did steam deck specific fixes.
Go Live on Steamdeck is now faster with zero-copy encoding from Gamescope, making it possible to share the action with your friends without burning up your Steamdeck.
Yea you’re right. I read the article after commenting and realised my mistake lol. Some of the replies have been entertaining though.
For the common Joe who has a Steam Deck and doesn’t really care if it’s powered by Linux or BSD or whatever
It may be a kind of Linux PC, but it’s not just a Linux PC. (Also not a fan of the American language…)
Please don’t install this shit on your computer
What’s the alternative then? Because I can’t really think of one that’s as easy as discord to stand up a server for your friends and manage access to it, not to mention audio and video with screen sharing. I guess teamspeak 3, but holy shit is it convoluted and complicated to setup and manage for the everyday user. There’s gilded but fuck that shit I’m not supporting the Roblox company. Revolt is another but there is no voice chat, no video chat, no screen sharing and it’s filled with sketchy people. Matrix? Sure, but it’s not easy to setup and manage at all. Discord works for what it needs to do and the features it has, if there’s an alternative I’m more than willing to try it out but so far there’s just nothing that comes close to the ease of use of discord. Discord is also supported on both Xbox and PlayStation, Sony even owns a minority stake in the company.
Revolt rebranded as Stoat and does have voice chat with discord-style hotseat channels available in beta. I still wouldn’t recommend it yet due to client bugs, but it’s getting there.
If you are using PC, Check out Element. It does utilize Matrix, but that gives you the ability to self host if you wish. Voice and video works well enough for me and my friends to stream to the room and was a suitable replacement for Discord.
Today I deleted my Discord account, I was using it in Firefox or Webcord wrapper. I can’t imagine installing this type of software on my computer. It’s scanning your computer by default to check what programs are you using or what games are you playing and it’s properiaty, commercial app.
You never know how the data they collect about you will be used. It’s a great tool for censorship, and Discord has good communication with the authorities. Despite this, they still have no problem with violence in the form of groups encouraging teenagers to self-harm, Nazis, and gore or pornographic content of a pedophilic or zoophilic nature. Unfortunately, as a minor, I came across a lot of this type of content there completely by accident. A large, centralized, unencrypted messenger allows for accurate tracking or complete destruction of a user’s history. This is important for political oppression, falsification, and evidence gathering.
Most people are too lazy to change anything in their lives, even their messenger, out of concern for their privacy and security. And there are alternatives, but they won’t even be able to emerge because of this majority. It’s not that all these messengers are free and we all pay dearly for them, but not with our own money. Money is not as valuable as power and the right to one’s identity.
If Matrix had as much money as Discord (where there are much better freedom-oriented alternatives to Discord), it would probably allow for the same simplicity as Discord. Unfortunately, ethical activity plays a secondary role for us. It’s the same with clothing—it’s easier to get clothes that are cheaply made in poor countries by exploiting children than clothes that are made locally with respect for workers’ rights.
I am not providing alternatives, because if someone does not understand this and is too lazy to look for them themselves, they should not clutter up spaces where valuable people gather.
Ditched mine years ago. I’m worried about the idiots who were too dumb to leave who are gonna die to this shit, who might already be getting got for things like being queer in Saudi Arabia.
It’s scanning your computer by default to check what programs are you using or what games are you playing
This is exactly why I like Discord.
If I’m online and not playing a game, I want my friends to see that I’m online so they can message me.
If I’m playing a game, I want my friends to know I am playing that game.
If it’s a multiplayer game, they can join in.
If it’s a single player campaign focused game, they know I won’t be keen to play a multiplayer game right now, but they can still message me if something big and spontaneous is happening.
If I don’t want to be contacted at all, I close discord.
I love that feature too! But I think it’s really dangerous in the current implementation when you can’t be sure what data they’re taking from your computer.
Why do you think ‘don’t install this shit on your computer’ is a concern?
And I guess if you can’t fuck with matrix, idk; fucking do without? Might just be there’s no safe easy-for-idiots way to get the thing you want right now. Shit happens.
As the other said, what are the alternatives? All my gaming friends are on Discord. I tried to make them switch to another platform but they won’t budge. I’m stuck with discord.
In my country literally everyone still uses Facebook and Messenger for that simple reason: everyone they know uses it.
I’ve always been against Discord and I miss the Mumble+IRC days, but Discord is just the default now and it’s not going away
Why?/what are the alternatives?
A bunch but Discord is a website so if you installed anything then it’s spyware.
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I would ditch Discord, but the TMBW server is just so darn good and I can’t leave that behind. Maybe I could convince them to set up a Matrix bridge (they already self-host MediaWiki), but then they’d probably end up basically doing this just for me.
My university’s Linux User’s Group is on Discord, but they have it bridged with a Matrix server; due to the current state of things in the US, they only allow political discussion in certain encrypted channels that are exclusive to the Matrix server.
As far as I know you can do double puppeting with Matrix discord bridges, or whatever it is called.
As in “the bridge posts using your account, and not a bot”. I have it set up on my own Matrix server, and I have servers and DMs bridged without issues.
Also, setting up a server with the ansible project is super easy, it’s one of those rare cases where the ansible is robust, easy to use and actually doesn’t break.
Audio on chat is busted on linux since last update but sure
Not a solution but I found on steam is I couldn’t get audio or mic to work. It would disconnect my audio devices when the app was open like pipewire was disconnecting. I then installed bazzite and it worked fine. This is from a PC not a steam deck though so steam os may be missing some drivers and such.
Alternatively, use Vesktop. It has telemetry removed. And it’s actually developed with Linux in mind.
No global keybinds is a huge dealbreaker for me
I’ve gotta look into this. I’m not really satisfied with Ripcord.
they can do all that but they can’t make a simple apt repository?
At least they provide an official Flatpak now.
Also, this isn’t an official repository, but https://github.com/palfrey/discord-apt works pretty good for me. If you look at the source code for the fetching script and the Github Workflows, you can see that they just pull directly from the Discord website, and comparing file hashes further confirms it. I no longer use it since the official Flatpak is an option now, but it’s still useful.
