Discord alternatives?
Discord is banned in Turkiye. The reason is some data theft, blackmail, AI montage photos, etc. As usual, our government made the easiest and most illogical move :)
I am looking for an alternative platform to talk and chat with my friends. Which platforms do you recommend?
The ones I tried:
- Revolt: Voice chat is not stable. They do not accept new registrations.
- Matrix: Unstable overall.
- TeamSpeak: ancient interface. We can still try it.
- XMPP: It has an old interface like TS. Not sure if it has voice channels.
- Your recommendations?
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waits for matrix fanboys to still chime in
My client shouldn't be bugged when I enter a room with a long history, right? Right?
Couldn't decrypt message
Hey, they're fixing that. Soon. Really. Any day now. For reals!
(That's the #1 thing that makes Matrix utterly unusable for me: if there's more than like, 10 messages, it's a game of is-it-broken-or-is-it-just-crap.)
I've found that Conduit handles it a lot better than Synapse does.
Tbf, they actually are. Element X and the sliding sync are ready I think. If the server and client both use it, I think you can use it today. Or maybe the whole matrix 2.0 where that's all integrated isn't pushed into main/master yet. Im any case, I read it was ready maybe a few weeks ago.
Element X is still missing a lot of features, "ready" is an exaggeration I feel
No Spaces support in particular is a dealbreaker for me
Ahh, good point. I have only been "testing" matrix for a year and haven't enabled sliding sync so haven't bothered using element x yet.
Well then theyre right- one day it might get done. 😄
It will be done the same year when it's finally "year of linux"... Sad, but seems to be the case.
Agreed. Element X and sliding sync don't support sso yet, so I've been unable to try them :/
Once those are added I'll be excited to give them a shot.
I currently use matrix and element with many bridges as my sole chat interface and it's very slow. So I look forward to speed improvements.
The lack of interest in it even amongst tech communities and bridges (they can link Matrix servers and Discord servers) constantly being down has kept me from giving Matrix a second chance.
I think it was a Linux gaming community last time that got flooded with hate content after the bridge went down and the Matrix side was left to itself.
Matrix is the only discord clone I know about. Does it have massive problems?
Yes. Without a question of a doubt.
Eh, that's a bit of an exaggeration. There is a lot of room for improvement, but it works pretty well today, especially if your rooms are relatively small (e.g. a few dozen people) and you don't use an overcrowded instance (e.g. not the main Matrix.org one).
If you can host your own, you can adjust the resources so it works well for you. If you can't, just avoid the main instance.
Matrix is probably the closest to Discord overall. If Element is bugging out on you, it might be worth trying other clients. Nheko worked well when I tried it, for example. Do note that the matrix.org homeserver is sometimes overloaded, so if you're having responsiveness issues, choosing or running a different homeserver will probably clear them right up.
Mumble.info is great for voice. If your text chat needs are pretty basic, it might be a good fit. I don't think it saves message history.
XMPP is a protocol, not an app. If you you saw an interface you didn't like, you could always just use a different client. I don't usually recommend it, since setting it up with all the features people usually expect is a bit complicated and error-prone, but it would probably be fine among a small group of friends if one of them has tech skills. I don't think it offers voice, at least not in any widely-supported way.
Our group uses mumble for voice and discord for text and backup voice or external voice. The voice quality is better, free, faster on mumble. Extremely low server requirements. It technically saves chat history but as server logs, not for the client.
What do you do when you want to share your screen?
For that kind of thing I use jitsi, works great and I have access to a sort of private instance that I use occasionally. Works for just voice too but it can be a little unreliable (the last two times I had a weird issue where the others suddenly couldn't hear me and vice versa but reloading fixed it) so something else might be better for that..
I use Steam Chat for playing games with family and friends. It has better audio quality than discord in my opinion, and you can make groups (something like Discord servers) too. It doesn't have all the functionality of servers, but the basic idea is there.
I am actually surprised nobody mentioned it yet Why use some third party application, when you can use the Steam's one.
It's not like the OP is concerned about privacy. They were using discord. They didn't say it has to be open source.
For talking outside of gaming or away from PC, I use signal.
IRC.
irssi for cli, hexchat for gui
We need client compatibility with discord
Ohhh, xFire, that takes me back. To a time of dedicated servers and not that bullshit service game fuckery.
Eh, I'm honestly trying to give Yahoo another shake now that Google is so terrible. That said, Yahoo still sucks to use, and it lost most of the charm that it had in the 90s. And BTW, the xFire suit was around 20 years ago, so you may be older than you want to admit.
Dang, that hits too close to home for me too. I have kids, and sometimes I forget how old I am because I care far more about how old they are that it just isn't as important to me.
xFire was great, didn't know the whole yahoo thing
Kinda liked the separate applications for voice and chat, we used ventrilo over teamspeak for reasons I don't recall but all of that is just ancient history at this point (was using that like literally 20 years ago)
Jitsi meet is what I use for calls with my friends. You can continue using revolt or matrix or something for the text channels.
https://meet.calyx.net/
Calyx Jitsi instance has been down for months though. 🤔
Ah ok. I didn't check but that's the one I've used in the past. meet.jit.si I believe still works but you might need to make an account.
You could self host revolt.
Signal should still have a desktop app, I believe
If only it synced messages with the mobile app properly
I use it on mobile and desktop regularly without sync issues. Has it always had that problem for you? I generally always get messages at the exact same time without fail.
I get them on desktop before my phone gives me a notification lol.
I don't have it on desktop anymore, but if I install it now, the desktop app won't have any conversations that I have on my phone. I use a Matrix bridge instead that doesn't forget messages.
Correct, it will only have all future messages. Nothing historic. But it should sync literally everything going forward.
Well, I don't like this. The idea of sacrificing messaging history in favour of illusory security gains doesn't sit well with me. Same goes for Signal backups.
Req if not using mobile tho?
It does
Teamspeak 3 is ancient, but works.
However there is a new version of Teamspeak (TS5) which is much closer to Discord and looks much nicer. You could give that a try
There was a TS4?
There's guilded, have an old guild leader in tech that always tries to get us to be guinea pigs for different voips, and that one isn't terrible if discord isn't available.
Ventrilo, is that even around anymore?
Mumble wasn't too bad,
Alternatively mumble and murmur, but the setup is more elaborate.
There isn't a full replacement for Discord out there, it'll have to be old school with multiple things together.
Teamspeak is great for voice comms (or Mumble). And you could use Matrix or XMPP for text chat. Matrix should be a lot better if you either self-host or join a smaller server that isn't so overloaded all the time.
For game streaming Broadcast Box paired with OBS Studio seems like a good option for low latency streaming.
"Unstable" is an understatement, and this comes from a girl who uses it all day every day.
Isn't it generally better if you use a smaller instance/host your own? Most of the complaints I've heard have been on the busier instances.
That said, I only use it occasionally to catch up on dev updates.
My current instance has ~160 users, and it's okay. I once used a friend's instance, where I was the 2nd user. It was very bad. That might in part be the fact that it was running Conduwuit though.
If you or one of your friends can self-host, my group used mumble before discord. I still don't really know why we switched.
XMPP/Jabber has whatever interface you choose (determined by the client you use), and does voice pretty darn well.
I'm currently using Jmp.chat as a SIM/data provider, and they provide an XMPP account via Snikket. I can connect to that account with pretty much any XMPP/Jabber client.
To me, XMPP/Jabber is the most flexible, because it's a protocol, and you choose which parts you want. And you can choose which clients you use. I have 2 clients on my phone and one on my laptop. They all work fine with the same account, with messages showing up at all simultaneously. One client (Snikket) has multiple accounts in it. The thing is XMPP/Jabber as a protocol is like SMTP - it's a standard, so all clients can communicate with each other, if they support the same features (eg OMEMO encryption, which is popular now).
Alternatively check out:
Teleguard, it's from the folks at SwissCows. They claim E2E, and from the way you connect devices, and that you can't recover an account from them, I tend to believe it. Though I haven't seen a third party evaluation (I belive they're closed source, unfortunately). So do with that what you will.
Simplex Chat, self hostable, they claim it's very secure. I've used it some, the phone app is a bit heavy on ram use.
There are numerous others out there.
xmpp is a protocol, it doesn't have interface. you may be thinking about some specific software using xmpp, in that case you have to say what software you are talking about.
Which is exactly what I said. You get the interface you choose.
When it got banned? My Friend is from Turkiye. He still used it.
Todays news
https://www.turkiyetoday.com/turkiye/turkiye-bans-discord-amid-concerns-over-platform-safety-62896/
Still working for me on hotel wifi.
Edit: it won’t launch on my laptop now. Stuck trying to update. Still works on my phone.
What does this mean? I can't seem to find info on what a 901 tag even is.
Looks like a gang, similar to the 764 gang in the US.
Oh Thanks for info
In fact matrix is great
How? A few weeks back I had to deal with getting spammed with invites to CSAM rooms. I've also been harassed many times on it. And not to mention lack of moderation tools and state issues.
Do not have really the problems you mentioned,but sadly it's more a problem of community than service ...
Mfw state resets (problem in server) is actually just because of the users
That's news to me. Where do they not allow new accounts signing up????
Since Discord was blocked in Russia today, everyone went to revolt, which cannot deal with so many registrations for now
Ah okay, yeah they probably don't have the backend servers for it as it has grown slowly if at all over the past year. Revolt is meant to be run on independent self hosted backends similar to Lemmy (only without federation) but humans are going to be humans, and simply pile into the one largest, most common Revolt instance and cause huge traffic problems.
So you're saying revolt is about to have a shitton of russian users, which means it's about to become a pro-russian war hub. You know what they say about nazis. Allow one nazi into your bar, and he'll invite his friends. Soon enough, your bar isn't a bar with a few nazis in it. It's become a nazi bar.
Same concept, different facists.
Russian users who used banned platforms instead of vkontakte aren't necessarily warmongers
Your reply sounds pretty xenophobic, ngl Isn't it better for Russian people to get access to information that Russian government doesn't control?
More like jingoistic, which is rather tiresome anymore. "Nazi" today is a virtually meaningless pejorative, and my dead grandparents are rolling in their graves having escaped real Nazis.
Literal last line of the post:
Ah yes, because all Russians are Nazis apparently
Russians are now Nazis?
Someone needs to read more history, and out down the Book of Pejoratives
Literally the last line from the post:
To those suggesting mumble, are there any good guides out there? The website is shockingly bad for introductory information.
https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble-docker
myself, I run a docker container of mumble in casaOS
its very easy to install via docker as mentioned above. Mumble is very lightweight. You could run the server on your desktop in the background easily or even on your router, there is a package for openwrt. The sound quality is awesome, voice is e2e encrypted and bandwidth should not be a problem either for a couple of people in the chat while you are playing.
https://www.mumble.info
Theres also zulip, but I havent tried it yet, but its supposedly open source discord, but you have to host the server yourself I think.
I don't recommend Zulip as Discord alternative. It's interesting take on slack-ish type of messenger, but not really "polished" experience for now.
IRC: it’s open source, it’s free, its retro
KiwiIRC is a web based IRC client. Does not have voice chat afaik, but since it's IRC it's very lightweight and had a low entry barrier.
There's not a great 1:1 replacement. I'd suggest some sort of hybrid approach. Personally, I use mumble for voip and matrix for text. I haven't experienced any significant stability issues with matrix, but self-hosting probably plays in my favor there.
I'm in the same boat and also looking for a privacy-respecting platform for communicating with family and friends. So I'd also like to add items that are not yet mentioned to the list of suggestions:
Your experience with XMPP will vary depending on the client you use. It's not a 1 to 1 replacement for discord, and I'm not sure if there's a client that can do group calls, but It can do 1 on 1 calls and group text chats. I'd recommend Cheogram for mobile, and possibly movim for desktop.
For group audio calls, if you found matrix unstable, then Mumble is likely your best bet, or perhaps Signal, if that's not banned as well.
Revolt seems to be the best for now. Today they got a lot of money and I hope, they'll make their best to make it a reasonable discord alternative
self-hosting matrix is possible, and after I got it set up, it works fine. That said, push notifications were acting up a lot at first (might have been fixed by an update since that hasn't been an issue in a while), and it is rather annoying to get your desktop and mobile clients set up to not be annoying about not being verified (iOS apps seem more fiddly with verifying than Android apps in my experience)
Despite my annoyances at first, the Element client really is the best and most mature one out there, and I do recommend it. Don't bother with any of the other ones; despite what the fluffychat settings want you to think, Element is the only client that can do any kind of audio/video calling, and most of the other clients only have web apps, so there's no hope for getting push notifications on mobile.
Ultimately it has worked for me, but my demands are three humans in a voice call once a week, no screenshare (use Parsec for that), and occasional text messages.
The Element X is supposed to be the best client, but I can’t find a way to join rooms within a chat. So for now I use Fluffy to join rooms, then back to Element X for actual usage. Kind of bothersome but I’m sure they’ll figure it out since the original Element app has the ability to join rooms.
How about Guilded?
https://spacebar.chat/
Discord was based off of Slack and Microsoft Teams is a trash knockoff. All depends what you intend to use it for.
XMPP is a standard and doesn't have mandated UIs.
If you want a voice chat, then Mumble. It's very narrow, just for games.
Guilded is really similar to Discord, but Roblox bought them so you need a Roblox account to use it. It's great for voice chat.
I agree, but after I tried three FOSS ones that were hard to set up and had very bad voice quality I gave up and tried Guilded which is working great. The most important feature I need is ability to locally mute people which not many apps have for some reason. What would you recommend I use?
I found this awesome Article Posted on Odysee which I will suggest you all read it, It's full of mostly OpenSource Alternatives too long to list here & plus it helps out the guy in metrics
Well I would add SimpleX-Chat as well as CWTCH since they use TOR
What did you end up going with?
None. There’s no true Discord alternative.
Is Telegram available?