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Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

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Re: Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

#281

Post by iamstupidsimple »

Arathorn wrote: post #269
e12e wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is the difference between channels and rooms, as in visiting rooms or tuning to a frequency to join a radio channel. It feels very different? And the use-cases are different.

Thanks all for the responses - the whole “matrix doesn’t have voice channels” thing is much clearer now: it’s not the hard bit (voice/video conferencing!) but just the UX of how it’s hooked up. This we can fix :)

Good to know you guys are listening, but I'll dispute that UX isn't hard! I think Matrix/Element is great but open source projects at large are let down by UX/UI issues more than anything.

Re: Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

#282

Post by pdimitar »

verdagon wrote: post #276
Flow wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO: Rust is going to be very very popular on everything from embedded to client-side web apps. Headlines like the one on this submission makes me think "finally, someone has started to write that thing in a sensible language".

I very much hope Rust becomes popular in the embedded space... but other languages are better for apps IMO. I'd rather use a click listener with TS/Kotlin/Swift than be forced into idiomatic Rust's architectural workarounds. This project made the right call, using TS for the client.

To be fair, as a Rust fan I think Kotlin and Swift definitely do better in app development still. They have a lot of good language features and their communities are stellar.

I don't insist on everything being Rust. But it gets very close in many areas IMO.

Re: Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

#283

Post by cdash »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #267
trulyme wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP, but Discord user too. UX matters. People are very sensitive to the context of features, what the subtle meaning of using them is, how we initiate the communication and how it all "feels" like, for lack of a better word. Kind of like there is no difference between (s)ftp and dropbox, and yet there is.

Ok but just for me as an observer, it's not clear what the actual UX difference here is. The discussion seems to suggest that the actual capability of the UX is in fact worse in Discord, and maybe not worth copying exactly if it causes a feature regression. It would help to specify exactly what you would like changed around, i.e. if there is a button that could change to make it more clear what is happening when you…

You are free to not copy it and people are free to continue to not use it. Seems simple to me.

Re: Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

#284

Post by mhh__ »

stouset wrote: post #136
mhh__ wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blazing fast So have you measured it or do you just mean you haven't implemented as many features? -> Usually the latter.

Cynicism aside, from what I’ve seen it’s been the former. See regex and rg by burntsushi as an example.

Don't get me wrong there's a lot of room for speed in programs we use regularly, but I make two observations:

    1. Speed is usually found by by people have worked on 
    existing tools in the space, and they don't often make 
    that much of a song and dance about it beyond that 
    theirs is faster.

    2. Speed is found in the minds of people not in their 
    tools. When you get past a certain amount of native- 
    ness, you get optimizations by knowing more or having 
    a brilliant insight into the problem rather than using 
    a new meme-language. It might be necessary for certain 
    types of programming but it's not sufficient.
Basically I don't like weird meme based marketing of tech. I'm a grumpy old man already and I'm the ripe old age of 20

Re: Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

#285

Post by pdimitar »

edem wrote: post #243
pdimitar wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would make a bad investor if you can't recognize the writing on the wall.

Which is?

That Rust is gaining both mind-share and market share.

A lot of the HN folks wage meaningless language wars that are a distraction from the actual success elements of Rust: namely that it removes a class of bugs by the mere virtue of your program compiling. Add to that a stellar quality and very dedicated community, sprinkle amazing tooling on top (semgrep filters, tree-sitter support, code-generation libraries) and it is a clear winner. Hence, "the writing on the wall" comment.

From HN and several other forums, plus a few companies I worked in, plus some meetups, I got the impression that the chief factor of slowing down Rust's adoption are a lot of C/C++ graybeards on influential positions that have an axe to grind against it and never bother to give actual technical arguments in a discussion. Unproductive and somewhat juvenile but hey, people being people.

That, plus the mind-boggling amount of C/C++ code that has to be rewritten should the world accept Rust as their successor is, shall we say, a very valid reason for its adoption to not be super fast. (And a fairly valid reason at that.) This problem sadly still exists. But with the Linux kernel starting to pay (some) attention to security problems, I have hope that such efforts will begin sooner rather than later.

Re: Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

#286

Post by stiltzkin »

schmorptron wrote: post #272
stiltzkin wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be aware people will critique if only PM are only e2e, this is what people who uses Signal and WhatsApp downplay Telegram.

I'm one of those people, but for a discord alternative, I think it's a pretty fair trade off. My WhatsApp groups are mostly under 100 people while discord servers get much, much bigger. The only thing I feel like would be viable would be one shared encryption key for large rooms that just gets shared between the members via a resource-intensive diffie-helman-like message once and then after that everyone just uses th…

> The only thing I feel like would be viable would be one shared encryption key for large rooms that just gets shared between the members via a resource-intensive diffie-helman-like message once and then after that everyone just uses the same key.

I agree on that extent. I find Telegram on this grey area which people recommend it as an alternative to Signal or WhatsApp (these people ask for group e2e) and at the same time many communities use Telegram channels and groups as alternatives/complementary to Discord. An app as Telegram is not going to please the majority and maybe this could be the case for Revolt.

Re: Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

#287

Post by poetaster »

terafo wrote: post #236
xvilka wrote: post #153

It's not Rust, it's Electron...

Backend is in rust, but I'm disappointed too.

QT QML for the win... (ducks)... Seriously, I still like it. But I write apps that run on phones. Including image editing. Electron, even with wasm is just ... no way.

Re: Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

#288

Post by stiltzkin »

Zomatree wrote: post #109
hammyhavoc wrote: post #49

Instead of yet another app/platform, why not Matrix protocol?

Hi, one of the revolt developers here, we wanted something contained and selfhosted instead of something federated, see https://developers.revolt.chat/faq/federation on why we dont plan on adding federation

> From personal experience, I’ve generally found federated protocols to not be suitable for real time communication, Matrix is incredibly buggy at times and it’s left a sour taste in my mouth.

Not sure this is a good reason for not adding it, Element is not buggy at all.

Re: Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

#289

Post by majkinetor »

theelous3 wrote: post #165
majkinetor wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contributing is hard. U have to follow 3rd party rules.

Unless they plan for their repo to have zero contrib policy and open merge rights, they will also have to follow rules and force people to follow their (third party) rules. Sometimes it's worthwhile to consider that the "third party rules" you don't want to abide, are there for good reason. Furthermore, sometimes the underlying reason for those rules is something you can hack on and open up. "Oh we won't ever support…

However, open source is almost 100% about "selfish" things like exploration, passion, relaxing etc. as shown by the number of projects that have exactly 1 maintainer (almost all of them). Linux and friends are exceptions and majority of devs working on those are payed by big corps and that is their regular job.

Re: Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

#290

Post by thayne »

mikenew wrote: post #223
Arathorn wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "matrix doesn't have voice channels" thing is a bit frustrating, because... in Element, you can hit the voice or video call button in any channel (not just voice channels!) and it will spin up a voice/video conference in that channel. If you then switch channel, you'll stay in the original conference, unless you drop and rejoin the new one. I think that's basically precisely the same capability as you get i…

> the UI is very subtly different to Discord? I use Discord and Element/Matrix exclusively, and have groups of friends that use both. They always gravitate towards Discord for voice. I think there's a couple small reasons that kind of add up 1. When there's an active call going, you can't see who's in it unless you join. It's just this ominous box with some unknown number of participants, and it creates this feeling…

Those all seem like things that could be fixed at a lower cost than creating a whole new app, but maybe there is some technical reason I'm not familiar with
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