Pretty much what it says on the tin, but for more context. My friends and I use Discord to play D&D and other TTRPGs. We also use it to send memes and just have conversations. We mostly do the chat, text, images, gifs, etc. But we also use the voice and video chat pretty regularly too. Screen share sometimes as well. So I’d like to try to find something that has all those features if possible.
The new ID or facial recognition requirement they are implementing is a deal breaker for a few of us, and so if I can set up some kind of alternative to make it a non-issue, I’d like to.
I’m running Ubunutu 22.04 LETS, AMD 3700X, 64GBRAM, 10x 6TB HDD, and and 2 4TB NVmE. Have a 2gb up/down internet connection. So I don’t think we should have any issues making it work smoothly for 7 people.
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Check out https://stoat.chat/, it’s the closest self hostable group communications platform that looks like Discord.
Just a fair warning in reply to this that the self-hosted version of Stoat doesn’t currently have voice chat. It’s an open issue that’s currently paused until they can finish their rework.
If you have the skill for it, it seems like you can patch work the existing voice chat back in, but it’s not part of their initial setup and there’s no instructions on how to do so properly
Well that seems like a fairly big deal.
Link to their voice chat implementatoon.
Looks like you can enable it on self hosted version. Probably worth someone trying it out personally. Before giving up on stoat.
sadly, it’s a little more complex than just enabling it. The supported self host deployment uses docker, and the docker containers that are available don’t contain the interfaces for voice or video calling as they are not up to date.
If I understand it right, to enable it would mean you need to either pull the source yourself and run it off of docker, or make a custom docker image using a version of stoat web that contains the ability to do voice calls.
reading the draft of the linked issue, it looks like the author isn’t doing voice call for the reason that they don’t know the proper way to integrate it into the docker image.
So to answer it: yes it looks like you can use voice servers on the current self hosted model, but you can’t use pre-existing docker images, and it will require you to manually add the new web UI in and patch where needed.
Turns out they also don’t support federation or e2ee. If those are things you care about.
Is there a docker-free build you can either install and mod to re-enable voice, or use to mod the docker blobs in accordance ?
I’ve been using it since it was called Revolt and quite like it, albeit I’ve never used the voice feature. My group doesn’t really have the need for it, but I can see it being a deal breaker for the self-hosted version.
Is there a significant benefit over matrix?
From what I can tell, the only benefit is that the platform is close to the Discord experience. So people migrating to Stoat would feel right at home.
But there’s no federation, no e2ee, apparently it’s difficult to get voice setup if you self host…
Matrix has it’s issues too. Goup chat e2ee is not good. No one uses it. But at least they’ve got federation.
https://continuwuity.org/ seems like a decent server to run if you want to run a matrix server.
Matrix?
Back in my day, (shakes cane), Teamspeak and Ventrillo were the big voice chat platforms/tools. Both have text chat and channels/rooms; but their focus is voice chat for gaming.
Matrix hoster here.
I would recommend Matrix as it has pretty much everything, including cross platform clients, threads, voice/video calls, screensharing, spaces (aka servers), federation and E2EE. Matrix also has bridges for Discord and pretty much every other service so this could ease transition…
But self hosting requires reading the docs and having some in depth knowledge and understanding as it can be quite complex.
I would recommend just creating a Matrix account on one of the common global servers and testing it.
If you want to self-host there are some pre-defined setups available (example) but I would still recommend to bring at least 5-10 hours.
Regarding operations: It’s really resilient and barely ever breaks and also doesn’t need a lot of resources. A 1-2vCPU server with under 1GB RAM server is enough for less than 10 people.
You se knowledgeable on this, so I hope you’ll allow me to ask this.
I don’t know anything about Discord, but I selfhost the Mattermost chat system for my family. They, too, are narrowing the free tier.
Can Matrix replace Mattermost for a family? Several separate “rooms” for various topics, plus 1-to-1 chats.
If it’s just chatting with your use case: definetly yes
E2EE group chats on matrix seems to be a huge problem still. I look forward to their MLS implementation. Hopefully that fixes a lot of these UX issues.
https://github.com/spacebarchat/spacebarchat
Literally reverse engineered discord, made open source.
TeamSpeek or Mumble.
Both have excellent voice chat.
Teamspeak still requires a license above a small user size, but has multiple clients that can accomodate different target audicences. The TS3 client still looks like it did back in the windows 7 days and the TS5 client is just copying discords homework (Not a clue what happend to 4 and I believe 6 is under development). Both use the same server backend and database structure so both work with one server and different user expirences.
Mumble is still the gold standard for handling large user bases (there is a reason big EvE Online alliances use mumble). It will take longer to set up, the configuration is handled by the server, not through authorized user accounts like TS.
The Mastodon founder, Eugen Rochko, has just announced that “We’ve moved our internal communications from Discord to Zulip at Mastodon”.
https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/116041405748460511
Zulip is probably more focused toward work than TTRPGs, but it can’t hurt to try it. (I haven’t tried it personally, yet.) It is self-hostable.
It’s a shame, zulip doesn’t have e2ee. not even DMs. but they seem to be working towards federation of some sort? there are no good/perfect solutions out there.
For e2ee, neither does Discord, nor Stoat, which is what most of these comments are pushing people towards.
Five years ago, a open-source project I worked on moved to Zulip (from Slack) and it was a small hurdle. But after a month, I really like it!
So much that I’ve pushed a few other open source projects (who lived on Discord).
I was really surprised when I started a new job two years ago and THEY used a self-hosted Zulip. It’s everything Im used to on Slack.
Discord has team speak/video sharing, which I don’t think Zulip has. But then again, we use something else for video calls.
I replaced Discord(and Whatsapp) with Matrix/Element as voice chat (and general chat) with my wife. I remember running it with Docker was bit annoying to set up (I was selfhosting beginner when first doing it now it could be easier), but with Yunohost it is one click install (if you are willing with swap operating server).
Nextcloud Talk could work for your needs, but I have not personally used it so hard to recommend it.
I still use IRC. There are now modern web clients like The Lounge or Convos that can display/share images in the channels, keep history and push notifications. Apparently Convos can do video chat but I never tried it. Unfortunately I’m not aware of screen sharing features for any of these.
So on a very simple setup, you need an IRC server, then install and connect one of those clients to your server, and use them through a web browser, either on a computer or on a phone.
It’s obviously not entirely Discord-like, but it is a simple way to chat and share images.
We switched to element (matrix-protocol) a while ago. Until now it worked fine for us - without any real problems. It already got a native voice/video-call implementation. But i heard that selfhosting isnt that smooth
I feel like Matrix has gotten a lot of hate the last year or so. Don’t really know why. Perhaps people see it as being misguided.
Haven’t found one that’s as good yet personally…
Any Matrix clients support screensharing?
Element and Element Call, although no streaming audio support on the horizon anytime soon.
Self hosting a Matrix server was daunting when I first looked into it, so concerns over it being difficult to deploy are pretty founded. But that changed when I discovered this repo. This makes quick work of getting one spun up, but the true gem of this is their documentation. They’ve probably got the best documentation I’ve ever read that explains the “why’s” and not just the “how’s”.
TeamSpeak 6 maybe. Don’t know where they’re up to on it at the moment kinda lost the thread a while ago.
Brief lookup seems things are still selfhosted: https://github.com/teamspeak/teamspeak6-server
I don’t know how often its updated though all things considered. I’ve been out of the ‘clans’ games for sometime and just easing myself back into things from those rose tinted glory days of Blueyonder Gaming, Barrysworld and Gamespy shenanigans.
First ever live voice over IP I used was Roger Wilco where I met the misses and spent the current 30 years messing around. Roger Wilco(Bought out by Gamespy), Ventrillo, mumble, ICQ, TS, TS3, Discord seems like we’re coming full circle again 🥲. Ah the nostalgia.