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Yeah honestly. Running the teamspeak server executable is hardly selfhosting, and they’re just another closed source proprietary service. Cool they’re still around after all these years I guess but they shouldn’t even be considered as a migration option.
Stoat and Fluxer are both open source, very straightforward and familiar, and I believe self-hostable. Much easier for casual users than Matrix too.
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Yeah honestly. Like I work in IT, have my own home server, run linux on everything, etc etc etc, but even I found Matrix to be a convoluted mess, and most clients have their own issues. I can’t imagine trying to get someone who’s not tech-savvy to try it out.
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I set up Matrix accounts for my parents this weekend and was completely horrified at how inconvenient the experience is for normies.
And that was with just using matrix.org as the server. AND the user experience after registration and login was not good either.
I tried to get friends into Matrix before and they were confused by it. So can confirm it’s not that simple for everyone.
Though to be fair, one of them wasn’t able to post without including an emoji in their message, that shit confused me too.
I’m unsure what is difficult about Matrix.
I’ve had several “casual” friends register and join my space on their own.
I think I locked myself out of my account. I’m only logged in on my old computer and I’ve deleted the app from my phone. I saved my security key (I have a session security key field and
security-key.txtin my 1password) but Element didn’t seem able to use it to reactivate. I would lose all my chats. Which wouldn’t be the end of the world, but still, I’m just demonstrating that I’m tech savvy enough to save things I’m told to save but I either missed saving a recovery key, wasn’t told to, or the process is just lacking. Regardless, like I said, I’m just demonstrating that it can be tricky.Hosting it is far from simple
Sure, but I see no need to host when so many cool nerds will gladly host your space for you. Different strokes, I guess.
Everyone needs at least one friend who’s willing to break their own brain about tech, so they can host all the neat shit! Plus if everyone chips in it’s pretty cheap
Using Stoat’s main server raises a privacy concern because it’s UK-based and AFAIK lacks E2EE—UK authorities could seize server data without our knowledge. That effectively means private use requires self-hosting.
Issue with self-hosting Stoat is, it’s currently more complicated than Matrix. This user created a detailed GitHub guide that documents their research and pitfalls for getting Stoat working with voice/video: https://github.com/javif89/stoat-selfhost
The official self-hosted guide (https://github.com/stoatchat/self-hosted) looks simple at first, but if you look at the compose file, it requires FOURTEEN containers to run and doesn’t yet include voice/video support which will increase complexity.
By contrast, TeamSpeak’s self-hosting appeal is its simplicity: only two services (or one with SQLite) and it works out of the box today.
But I agree — moving from one closed-source silo to another isn’t ideal. I just wish Stoat were easier to run behind the scenes.
For me, a combination of matrix for text chat and mumble for voice is the simplest and most privacy respecting way to self-host a discord alternative.
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There’s also Movim, which doesn’t even require an email, you can join instantly with just a username and password.
The official self-hosted guide is actually quite simple and straightforward. I had it set up and going in a half hour or so, and that’s even with removing Caddy and using my existing nginx reverse proxy. It’s intimidating at first-glance, yeah.
That being said, the official self-host guide is also 5 months out of date. The alternative you linked requires jumping through a bunch of hoops because it’s just a small community of enthusiasts hacking together the current version of Stoat for self-hosting.
So I acknowledge that self-hosting current version of Stoat with voice is rather complicated and frustrating right now, but hopefully it becomes as simple as the official self-hosting guide eventually.
Using Stoat’s main server raises a privacy concern because it’s UK-based and AFAIK lacks E2EE—UK authorities could seize server data without our knowledge.
When the alternative is Discord that’s no different. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
I’m not sure which horse to bet on Stoat or fluxer.app.
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One thing that worries me a little about fluxer is this:
Finally, we can offer commercial licences to companies that want to run Fluxer internally without being bound by the AGPLv3 copyleft terms. This is enabled via a contributor-friendly CLA, but it doesn’t create a separate “enterprise edition”. It’s still the same Fluxer software everyone else uses.
They have a CLA on contributions. So while today Fluxer is licensed as AGPLv3, tomorrow they can pull the rug and change the license, just like everyone else has been doing.
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EDIT: The Fluxer dev agreed to remove the CLA!
Woah, didn’t know about that, thanks for the heads up. That’s definitely dampening my goodwill toward it.
As an alternative, I’d suggest Movim, which has no CLA, and is already federated.
Hey, just wanted to give you an update that the Fluxer dev actually agreed to remove the CLA!
Holy fuck! Noice!!!
So while today Fluxer is licensed as AGPLv3, tomorrow they can pull the rug and change the license, just like everyone else has been doing.
Isn’t that just a problem for contributors to worry about though?
Like, it’s not like they can remove (or change the license of) the code that’s already out there (their CLA says existing source code releases stay licensed as-is), nor does this affect forks. So I don’t really see the harm to the consumer.
any distributed version that includes your contribution remains properly licensed under the project license(s) that applied when you contributed.
They can’t retroactively close-source the older versions released under AGPL, but if it ever required a community fork to continue the last release of the GPL version, it would be a massive burden to maintain it, and could cause federation to break as the codebase diverges over time, which would create a rift in the community. You’d also have to hope that average users care enough about the license to jump ship to the GPL (probably now not as full-featured) version, otherwise the GPL version risks not being able to get enough funding to continue, or enough users to convince the larger communities to move over.
As a somewhat similar real world example, the pixel-art program Aseprite once used a FLOSS license, but it switched to a proprietary license at some point. The last GPL version was forked by the community, but it never got much traction, and is now massively behind the closed source version in features and userbase.
XMPP!
Stoat is dead in the water due to dependency on the UK and not an easy solution to deploy yet.
Fluxer is dead in the water due to license.
I don’t get why so many people are saying this. Afaik, it doesn’t have channels within servers like Discord and Slack, which I feel is a defining feature in the text chat part of the apps.
channels within servers
Oh that is like the second most common thing on XMPP! It’s rooms/chats/conversations on servers/conferences/salons, etc. Like, come on, even IRC has that and that was made before I was born.
The one thing that’s complex, or at least bad in the UI I’ve seen for most XMPP clients, is that searchability of rooms is not very good. Like, discoverability is, but to my knowledge there’s no way to actually filter for rooms based on a keyword, you either get the whole roomlist for a server or nothing.
Oh shoot, is it? I’m using Cheogram and Conversations on my phone and I can’t figure it out. I guess it depends on the client?? I’m a bit confused.
I think Iambalicious may be confusing terms. AFAIK no XMPP client has discord-like rooms within channels. The Movim client is actively working on implementing that feature (it can also do group video calls and screen sharing), but it’s the only one doing that unless I’m mistaken.
Thanks! Yeah because I’ve been scratching my head over their comment for some time now as I’m not able to figure out how to use it like I used use Discord.
Oh you mean nested rooms? That’s just normal rooms with a different organization. I think there is one XMPP proposal for them but I don’t know of any server that implements it (they are unneeded since you can just create temporary chatrooms, same as in IRC) and then you need client support, of which apparently only Movim and Dino are working on it yeah.
Fluxer feels more full-featured to me
Yeah… I hate watching people make the same mistake over and over. I guess we just have to take the lead and build the communities that we need over on Stoat and Matrix.
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Nice, what’s the link?
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It looks like its not working for me.
AmericansPeople will do anything but just setup XMPP, this is literally what it was invented for.having a tool intended for a purpose doesn’t necessarily mean it fits that description without issues. the xmpp world is filled with a heterogenous plethora of clients of various quality and encryption duct-taped on top of about a third (made up/guesstimated number based on nothing but my gut feeling having gone down that rabbit hole partly). even if i convinced all of my friends to switch, there wpuld be no client for all platforms and learning miltiple programs to use a single protocol is bad UX imho
there would be no client for all platforms
Movim works on all platforms, already has most Discord functionality such as audio/video group calls, screen sharing with audio, and is currently implementing Discord-like spaces as we speak. It even looks like Discord.
Im seeing a huge increase in people using stoat. And its been fun.
If anyone is interested in Retro Games: https://stt.gg/GJh5JHy2
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coo see you there!
Stoat, both its app and website refuse to open on my mobile data. I doubt it’s only happening to me. Teamspeak at least lets people host and have control of their own servers.
I had problems logging in the other day, which I assume was the server getting hammered.
That’s a separate issue from what I’m having. It only doesn’t work on my verizon cell service. Unfortunately it makes stoat not an option for me.
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Yeah, I get “address not found” regardless of browser. I’ll probably be keeping a closer eye on fluxer.
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I just spent a week trying to set up my own server and good lord it was such a battle I gave up. Matrix? Up in like half an hour. Shame because my friends are so much more interested in Revolt lmao. Just gonna give them some time to sort out their business before trying again.
TeamSpeak only supports 32 simultaneous users, you must purchase a license to support more than that.
Yeah, this bit was all I needei to know:
Besides all of that, if you’d rather not chat to randoms who also happen to have an unhealthy obsession with Arc Raiders, you’ll likely need to pay an admittedly small subscription fee to rent your own ten-person community voice server. By that point, you’re handing over card details and essentially fulfilling an age assurance check anyway. If you’d rather limit how much info your chat platform of choice has about you, there are arguably better options out there.
How does CC details qualify as age verification? It’s WAY better than gov ID or face scan.
I just mean this type of business model is ripe for enshittification.
Tangentially related: Fuck Arc raiders.
For me, it wasn’t about the AI. It’s that early development of the game was all PvE play. PVP was something that was added at launch, and the game is tagged as PvE, along with PvP on steam. Stupid me thought there would be PvE only lobbies and I was clearly mistaken. I tried playing it, I put 100 hours in. The entire game was me grinding the easy map, to level up and craft/buy better guns, only to be shot on sight by someone and have everything I worked for taken. I would solo down bastions, leapers, and bombdiers to have someone run up and shoot me on site, without asking if I would share loot. (I would rather share than lose everything.) Events in the game also reward PvP play by awarding cred. People are making smurf accounts so they can end up in friendly matches to dominate people that don’t want to pvp. Enemy spawns are fucked up too. I’ve downed arc only for the corpses to despawn as I attempt to loot it. I’ve walked into clear areas, only to have bombadiers spawn on top of me out of nowhere. The worst part of the game is being dropped into a map/match after 10 minutes has elapsed, which means anything decent has already been looted and you’re more likely to run into people camping extraction points. They have a temp event running that rewards PvE cooperative play, and I’ve still gotten killed on site, although less frequently. After the event is over, I’ll probably uninstall the game again.
Shit, thanks for your insight. I was somewhat interested in the game just because of the world it’s set in, but, gah that sounds awful.
Not trying to change your mind because if you don’t like it you don’t like it, but the fame was developed and play tested as a PvE game. It was slated for release before The Finals. The playtesting revealed that the game was just not fun. The developers, the play testers, everyone involved felt it was boring. They delayed the game and created what was released.
I understand not personally enjoying what was released, but Embark made a decision to change the gameplay during development on their own, they weren’t forced to by a publisher or anything, and they didn’t renege on any promise or anything.
The stuff I read about the play testing indicated it was PVE. I didn’t do enough research before purchasing, no argument there. I happen to actually enjoy fighting the arc, and I really enjoy when I can play co-operatively, and do things like save someone that’s pinned down by ARC, or help others down bastions, bombadiers, and matriarchs. Getting shot in the back after I’m soloing arc and my shield is down isn’t fun. Getting shot even after I say I’m friendly, and I can’t defend myself, or else trigger the algorithm to put me in more pvp matchups isn’t fun. If it was already tested as a PvE game, I don’t see why they can’t give us PVE and PVP lobbies. Letting players decide if they want to risk PVP or not.
I absolutely loath PvP in gaming. Always have. However, I recently discovered that I enjoy extraction shooters (I think that’s what these types of games are called). Been playing HOLE and wished for something like it with co-op for me and a friend to play.
Oof that’s a no-go
That’s 32 connected users to voice, not total server users isn’t it?
Correct. 32 people connected to voice simultaneously, but there isn’t persistent text chat. So really, only 32 users at a time, at all. The lack of text made me set up a Matrix homeserver instead.
I don’t know. They call them “slots” without elaborating and tell you to contact them for more details.
For a room to chat or to talk with mic or webcam? I never used Teamspeak before.
For anything, is my understanding. If they try to open it, they’re just represented with a “server full” notification.
Only the person who creates the room have to pay or everyone who want to join a room that is bigger than the limit?
Whoever hosts the server
why go from one corporate property to another when enshitification is the problem and libre options are available??
tomorrow’s headline: “Teamspeak CEO excited to be working with Discord”
Matrix has the best architecture by far. The only feature it lacks is high fps screenshare with audio. Right now its only acceptable for like a powerpoint presentation.
When the update fixing that comes it will finally be ready to fully replace discord.
I often fall back to Molly for video chat, the quality is superior
Sticking with discord for slightly better video doesn’t sound reasonable
Well convince my 22 friends to switch when a feature they consider critical is missing
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True. However TS has been around for a very very long time and have a proven record of not shitting on users. The free server and client have remained free all this time.
That doesn’t mean things will always be good though.
TS also has a straightforward charge for server hosting.
This is free on Discord, but we all know nothing is actually free.deleted by creator
Was looking at moving over, but among other things their mobile client is paid, and poorly reviewed. My main discord community is 1100 members, it’s already going to be hard to get most of them to jump to another platform without it costing all of them for phone access.
I don’t know what they’re even doing. TeamSpeak/Mumble is not a replacement for Discord. There’s no separate text channels in addition to the voice ones. It’s just a VOIP program. If you move from Discord to one of those you’re either in addition fundamentally changing your way of thinking or you’re in for disappointment.
For one there’s no “public communities” as with Discord. Here are the biggest servers from mumist.eu:
teamspeak 6 has group chats and private messagimg
Yeah no. There was a reason we all abandoned TeamSpeak years ago.
Bring back Ventrilo. Get on Vent or I’ll have you bent
Ventrilo has innate delay and is proprietary.
Mumble is open source and has lowest latency of all the apps.
That may be the case, but in Ventrilo you can page someone “[][][][][][][][][]” and it will go “page from left square bracket right square bracket left square bracket right square bracket left square bracket right square bracket…” This is a major advantage
True, Mumble does have text-to-speech, but no Microsoft Sam in a roflcopter that goes soisoisoisoisoisoi
I’ll never forgive Bill Gates for getting rid of Microsoft Sam. Now to take a biiig sip of coffee and look at what he’s been up to since then
We sit here on Ventrilo playing some DotA
I know Teamspeak 6 is in beta, so I get it. But boy when I tried it, it was just awful. It took me literal minutes just to figure out how to disconnect from the voice server. They desperately need to hire someone for UX who has actual experience in, you know, design.
And getting Matrix (Synapse) to run is about as teeth-pulling as getting an Oracle database system to run back in 2001.
I don’t like what Discord is doing. And I’ll likely find some alternative if I can convince others to also join me, but there simply is no viable alternative that gives the exact level of experience that Discord does (from a feature point of view and a UI/UX point of view).
And yes, I’ve tried Fluxer. It’s a good start, but still needs a lot of work, which the maintainer says is ongoing (work such as making self-hosting viable, etc). While I like the UI/UX of Fluxer, I am concerned that its UI is effectively a direct copy of Discord from a few years ago and I don’t know if Discord would be legally able to do something about this. Perhaps it’s all fine, and if so, I wish Fluxer immense success at being that viable Discord alternative, and I will keep an eye on this project.
Stoat seems pretty close to where it needs to be. Plus it’s open source and self-hostable.
EDIT>> And apparently I’m not the only one who may have issues with their current methodologies for using docker compose: https://github.com/stoatchat/self-hosted/issues/176
EDIT 2>> I tried Stoat using their hosted service (not self-hosting), and it leaves a lot to be desired as it relates to roles/permissions. I figure it’s a good six months or more away from being a viable alternative to Discord. It’s a good start, though.
Thanks for the reminder of that!
I’ve heard of it, but hadn’t yet looked into it much. I see this: https://github.com/stoatchat/self-hosted . It seems promising, I just wish it was a simple docker compose file with parameters (such as domain name/config file volume path/etc), so I can easily run it on UnRAID. But it’s requesting I run a shell script to generate some configuration file which could have been simple docker compose parameters. Therefore, in its current form, it requires I run docker compose via a shell that has the repo cloned.
And in order to do it a more proper way, in my opinion, I’d have to alter the compose file to change the “volumes” for many of the defined services to point to UnRAID’s appdata location. Every bit of this could have simply been environment variables within the compose file. And it would be ideal if the compose file could be set up to allow for external docker services that already exist (such as mongodb, redis, and rabbitmq). And it should expect reverse proxy hosting by default, not be the exception, again in my opinion.
I get that it’s open source and I could submit a pull request to do all I’d want, I’m just looking for a quick alternative to Discord without this level of effort. None seem to exist currently, at least for self-hosting. So I’ll continue looking into this when I decide to put in the effort for it. But I do appreciate your suggestion and may indeed go down this path soon.
whatever happened to meeting up with your mom’s house on a bunch of folding tables in the living room
Those must be some big tables
did you just call me fat
time repeats itself.
This is the history they warned us not to repeat!
true, but i heard teamspeak fixed the issues it had?
What issues? I can’t even remember the last time I used TeamSpeak. Ha to be around Windows XP.
i know people Moved to Discord because it fixed the problems that teamspeak had?
i wonder if teamspeak tried to add Discord’s features.
Does anyone know if their self hosted version has caught up to their client version? (In terms of features)
Is mumble still a thing? It was the best for low latency and automatic mic pickup/ nouse cancelling back in the day.
I’ll stick to Matrix thanks
