What alternative would you suggest if I just want to talk to my mates while gaming?
I gave up on setting up TeamSpeak after like an hour and many crashes and errors.
I was a TeamSpeak fan for many years when using windows, but on Linux I highly dislike it.
Element has been working for me and my friends. At the moment, it just embeds Jitsi within the client to do group calls (which works fine. Jisti isn't bad by any means), but native group calls are being worked on and are currently in beta!
Calls should come any month now. element-x just works on voice messages. The app is already able to make calls, you may try it b starting a call here and opening the link with the app. Just the ui and the things surrounding it are missing.
I wish they would work on proper voice channels like discord has. The whole 'meeting room' zoom call style thing is obnoxious to use, and the screen sharing has so much lag.
There are "Video Rooms". They're in beta too.
Also, screen sharing is done via the same platform agnostic web APIs every other Electron-based app uses, though.
I got rid of screen capture induced lag by switching to Wayland.
The screen capture isn't the issue, encoding the stream is where discord manages to do it with only a second or so of latency. Jitsi and similar seem to have much longer delays.
i just got matrix up and running. its a federated ommunications specification. id invite you to mine but im still ironing things out. check out https://www.matrix.org
And requires setting up and managing a server, which costs time and money and requires a certain degree of expertise. Also it can’t really be used as a primary chat app, so you still have to use another app for that. It also doesn’t support features like livestreams so that’s another application you may need.
There is a pretty similar looking and function called Revolt that could be useful for getting people that are used to Discord to switch. I think they also have a long goal of being able to send and receive messages and calls with Discord. Obviously they don't have that atm, but it is open-source and nice to at least know about in the event a quick exodus of Discord is needed.
Use a different homeserver for matrix and it's way faster then the default matrix.org one for the element clients servers joinmatrix.org is a good list
Did you try the TeamSpeak 5 beta client? It uses CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) I think so it should be pretty platform agnostic. You can join TS3 servers with it just fine :)
Idk about them, but it's a centralized, locked-down service that absorbs and holds information and data hostage like tomorrow.
As someone who's trying to completely avoid Discord, it's quite frustrating how many communities and projects will put important information in their Discords, and nowhere else. You have to have an account to see it, and it also isn't searchable in a search engine. It is actually quite terrible for pretty much everyone.
Element/Matrix lets you peek into public chats and servers/spaces without an account, so it can definitely be done. They won't do it though, because they gotta make you feel dat FOMO lol.
I can acknowledge all that and still say fuck discord. I never mentioned herding everyone over, I just explained why I think it's a parasite and why I have a strong disliking towards it.
Don't need the majority. The majority is not even interested in these communities. The ones that are, are likely proponents of FOSS themselves and should (in theory) switch over.
Matrix is a better platform for realtime communication, but it has the same issue with needing an account and being difficult to search. Any discussions that take place on Discord or Matrix will be fleeting, as it prioritizes only the most recent discussion in the chat. Thus making long form discussions about particular topics impossible.
All technical discussions should be archived on a searchable forum. If you are using a source forge like GitHub and GitLab, then public discussions should take place there. There's no better place for discussions and questions about code than in the same place where the code is hosted itself. Platform integrations make it very easy to associate discussions to commits and merge requests.
While not ideal, even hosted forum platforms like Lemmy and Reddit are still better than using a chat client. If only to serve as a platform for broader public discussions and questions. People are more likely to already have a Lemmy or Reddit account than they are to have a GitHub or GitLab account.
Old electron version (meaning no screensharing on wayland), really buggy linux application, no encryption, poorly enforced rules and policies, micro transactions… Honestly, the linux version of discord is so terrible that I've been running it from a web browser for the last month or so, it's genuinely much better lol
Yesterday they enabled monitoring of all messages in their servers. It was obvious before, but now they are getting even more 1984.
Communities should migrate as soon as possible.
They were already scanning every message and DM for data tracking and whatnot to sell anyway, the only difference now is they're using it for TOS violations.
Privacy-wise nothing has changed, but actual consequences for actually bad things like racism / transphobia / csam / etc. is good. The only real issue is what if they decide that sharing a music file is piracy and now your account is penalized? What about uploading an NES ROM to a friend via a DM? Or sharing a link to an anime piracy website?
It's the kind of thing that has to be a balance between making sure users aren't doing stuff that is strictly against Discord's rules, but also about making a good-faith attempt to limit things that can get Discord themselves in trouble from companies who are becoming more and more aware that Discord has been used as a piracy-safe haven for quite some time now. (Like how they're limiting their "using discord upload URLs like your own CDN" issue last month.)
Fuck discord.
What alternative would you suggest if I just want to talk to my mates while gaming? I gave up on setting up TeamSpeak after like an hour and many crashes and errors. I was a TeamSpeak fan for many years when using windows, but on Linux I highly dislike it.
Element has been working for me and my friends. At the moment, it just embeds Jitsi within the client to do group calls (which works fine. Jisti isn't bad by any means), but native group calls are being worked on and are currently in beta!
Calls should come any month now. element-x just works on voice messages. The app is already able to make calls, you may try it b starting a call here and opening the link with the app. Just the ui and the things surrounding it are missing.
I wish they would work on proper voice channels like discord has. The whole 'meeting room' zoom call style thing is obnoxious to use, and the screen sharing has so much lag.
There are "Video Rooms". They're in beta too.
Also, screen sharing is done via the same platform agnostic web APIs every other Electron-based app uses, though.
I got rid of screen capture induced lag by switching to Wayland.
The screen capture isn't the issue, encoding the stream is where discord manages to do it with only a second or so of latency. Jitsi and similar seem to have much longer delays.
There is "broadcasting" in element/ schildichat. Is that the same?
There's no lag on my end, might be server/ connection dependent
You can use Mumble instead of teamspeak.
If you just want to talk, mumble would be a very lightweight alternative.
i just got matrix up and running. its a federated ommunications specification. id invite you to mine but im still ironing things out. check out https://www.matrix.org
Does matrix have voice chat, video chat?
It has an integration with Jitsi.
It has a native implementation for 1 to 1 calls and group calls is currently in beta for the Element client.
ive yet to test it myself but it seems to support voice and video
Nope.
it didnt even take that long to look, why lie?
It has Jitsi integration, have they added something else finally?
Not yet but it's being worked on and it's close now
Mumble (is comoletely free software and has a better quality even than teamspeak)
And requires setting up and managing a server, which costs time and money and requires a certain degree of expertise. Also it can’t really be used as a primary chat app, so you still have to use another app for that. It also doesn’t support features like livestreams so that’s another application you may need.
There is a pretty similar looking and function called Revolt that could be useful for getting people that are used to Discord to switch. I think they also have a long goal of being able to send and receive messages and calls with Discord. Obviously they don't have that atm, but it is open-source and nice to at least know about in the event a quick exodus of Discord is needed.
Mumble is your best bet for an actual gaming voice chat setup.
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Use a different homeserver for matrix and it's way faster then the default matrix.org one for the element clients servers joinmatrix.org is a good list
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In my eyes that makes it even worse
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Did you try the TeamSpeak 5 beta client? It uses CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) I think so it should be pretty platform agnostic. You can join TS3 servers with it just fine :)
Why?
Idk about them, but it's a centralized, locked-down service that absorbs and holds information and data hostage like tomorrow.
As someone who's trying to completely avoid Discord, it's quite frustrating how many communities and projects will put important information in their Discords, and nowhere else. You have to have an account to see it, and it also isn't searchable in a search engine. It is actually quite terrible for pretty much everyone.
Element/Matrix lets you peek into public chats and servers/spaces without an account, so it can definitely be done. They won't do it though, because they gotta make you feel dat FOMO lol.
I mean cool, but good luck convincing the vast majority of users leaving Discord for Matrix.
This development is beneficial for the Linux gaming ecosystem, proprietary be damned.
I can acknowledge all that and still say fuck discord. I never mentioned herding everyone over, I just explained why I think it's a parasite and why I have a strong disliking towards it.
Don't need the majority. The majority is not even interested in these communities. The ones that are, are likely proponents of FOSS themselves and should (in theory) switch over.
All you have to do is bridge the two together and have the Matrix one shown more prominently.
Do you expect your average Discord user to bother going through such hoops?
Sorry. What I meant was that the project maintainers should do that, so the Discord users can use Discord but Matrix is still the main option.
Project leaders?
Maintainers. The people that make the project.
Matrix is a better platform for realtime communication, but it has the same issue with needing an account and being difficult to search. Any discussions that take place on Discord or Matrix will be fleeting, as it prioritizes only the most recent discussion in the chat. Thus making long form discussions about particular topics impossible.
All technical discussions should be archived on a searchable forum. If you are using a source forge like GitHub and GitLab, then public discussions should take place there. There's no better place for discussions and questions about code than in the same place where the code is hosted itself. Platform integrations make it very easy to associate discussions to commits and merge requests.
While not ideal, even hosted forum platforms like Lemmy and Reddit are still better than using a chat client. If only to serve as a platform for broader public discussions and questions. People are more likely to already have a Lemmy or Reddit account than they are to have a GitHub or GitLab account.
I do agree Discord shouldn't be used as a Gitlab issue tracker, yet development teams still insists on continuing this practice.
Based
Old electron version (meaning no screensharing on wayland), really buggy linux application, no encryption, poorly enforced rules and policies, micro transactions… Honestly, the linux version of discord is so terrible that I've been running it from a web browser for the last month or so, it's genuinely much better lol
Yesterday they enabled monitoring of all messages in their servers. It was obvious before, but now they are getting even more 1984. Communities should migrate as soon as possible.
I believe it, but citation(s) please?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6AlbG2ZoKs
They were already scanning every message and DM for data tracking and whatnot to sell anyway, the only difference now is they're using it for TOS violations.
Privacy-wise nothing has changed, but actual consequences for actually bad things like racism / transphobia / csam / etc. is good. The only real issue is what if they decide that sharing a music file is piracy and now your account is penalized? What about uploading an NES ROM to a friend via a DM? Or sharing a link to an anime piracy website?
It's the kind of thing that has to be a balance between making sure users aren't doing stuff that is strictly against Discord's rules, but also about making a good-faith attempt to limit things that can get Discord themselves in trouble from companies who are becoming more and more aware that Discord has been used as a piracy-safe haven for quite some time now. (Like how they're limiting their "using discord upload URLs like your own CDN" issue last month.)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=U6AlbG2ZoKs
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.