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Discord Alternatives, Ranked

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Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#441

Post by palata »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #433
aaravchen wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but whether you're even aware of the XEPs and how it's presented to the user, is a critical factor in viewing it as "confusing". Gaim for example only even tells you about XEPs if you dig into the server settings, and then it shows a very good job of listing all XEPs from either the server or client and noting which are supported by each in a table if you're far enough down the rabbithole that this…

Yes I agree, apps should never mentioned XEPs. Most devs have no reason to even know about them, why would a user case? Some apps are built by protocol nerds and they like seeing the list. Maybe very hidden is ok but in general not something any user cares about.

How would devs not have to know about them? Say I want to write an XMPP-enabled app, how do I do it? Are there XMPP libraries that already implement all the required need protocols?

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#442

Post by cwillu »

71bw wrote: post #421
su-m4tt wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teamspeak6 does have screen sharing. I've been using it with my group of friends for a about a month now. Its quite solid in my opinion, uses a peer to peer system with an option to host a central server for video.

Have they finally added persisent, usable text channels as well?

I can't speak to usable because the group doesn't use it, but chat is persistent now, at least.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#443

Post by Bender »

xg15 wrote: post #195

If the age verification/mandatory ID is the result of new laws, how exactly would switching to an alternative server help? Wouldn't they be forced to implement the same measures as well sooner or later?

If the age verification/mandatory ID is the result of new laws, how exactly would switching to an alternative server help? Wouldn't they be forced to implement the same measures as well sooner or later?

Possibly in the UK. Not likely in the USA and even if so most of us will just ignore the laws and if need be just move to a .onion hidden service. In this regard I like the totalitarian aspect of these laws as it will fragment society and push many more people under ground. I like the idea of fragmenting the big services so that governments and shady companies have a harder time hoovering up all the data in one place and taking my words out of context or associating me with some clown on their watch lists that was too lazy or cavalier to implement intermediate level opsec.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#444

Post by Bender »

alt187 wrote: post #185
coretx wrote: post #143

IRC is the only alternative that runs on random potatos and survives lawfare.

One has still yet to convince me of anything IRC has over XMPP.

One has still yet to convince me of anything IRC has over XMPP.

I think you should be able to use whatever suits your needs and preferences. The key is removing friction for the potential users. Friction can be overcome by incentives e.g. what it is in for them to jump through a few hoops. As just one example the more totalitarian and risky that laws become the less that people will object to a little initial friction. This can also weed out lower quality members.

IRC, XMPP, SSH, Self hosted forums, Radio Mesh ... bring it all!

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#445

Post by Bender »

popcar2 wrote: post #222

I was considering making a similar list since I was very interested in checking out alternative chat programs, but I have to say this list isn't that good. A lot of the alternatives here aren't ACTUALLY Discord alternatives. Most people use Discord for its community features and being able to join massive servers with 1+ million people, follow news, talk in forums, etc... It also has a lot of features people hand-wai…

being able to join massive servers with 1+ million people

Personally I would never want to join that noise. If an IRC channel has more than 50 people I tend to avoid it unless it is a technical channel that may have some knowledgeable people. If I want to reach millions of people I will find a way to join the conversation of an influencer on their podcast but hopefully such a need never comes to pass for me.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#446

Post by 4nonverbal-alit »

morajabi wrote: post #220
4nonverbal-alit wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Website doesn't have any info about the product. I don't know which features are there going to be. Screenshots would be cool as well to evaluate UX. Frankly the github readme is more useful than the website in that regard.

You're correct. TBH I didn't want to spend time on the website more than a waitlist, instead focused on building the app. I intended the Github readme to show more about the project and I post updates with screenshots on Twitter/X. I'm putting up a docs page today to incrementally add more information about the roadmap, vision, Bot SDK, API docs, etc. Anything in particular you're curious about?

Are you planning on releasing the server as a standalone application? Or it will be source available client + proprietary server? I've checked Noor, which looks to have a nice UX and functionalities I'd like to see (chat and realtime voice channels) without gimmicks like threads inside chats, pretending to be forums. I am wondering why you've decided to start over again?

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#447

Post by Groxx »

aaravchen wrote: post #414
Groxx wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's overwhelmingly more of an outsider talking point than an actual issue in practice. There's a category of people that just says any extensible protocol must fundamentally have massive amounts of incompatibility, and brings it up every chance they can... and while that is technically always possible, it only happens in practice if clients diverge greatly. XMPP clients mostly work together much better than Matrix c…

For Matrix clients I'm given to understand the issue is the lack of XEP equivalents. Either your server(s) and clients are all on the latest available version or you're SOL. This makes third party clients effectively impossible since every change is basically a breaking change and the client and server are tightly coupled. XMPP took it a step further and has feature segmentation by defining XEPs. This is basic minimu…

XEP equivalents: as far as I can tell, as a mostly-outsider, that's covered by "MSC"s: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/tree/mai... described by https://spec.matrix.org/proposals/

Whether or not those are being done well / compatibly / etc, no idea.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#448

Post by Groxx »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #432
aaravchen wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XMPP has had less allure as "the new thing" since it's been around for a very long time. It was _the_ chat protocol in the 2000s when it started, and all chat apps used it (when AOL Instant Messenger, Trilian, Purple, Yahoo, ICQ, etc all interoperated). Vendor lock in started taking off not long after though, so Facebook Messenger (also originally XMPP) stopped interoperating and went fully closed along with a number…

> when AOL Instant Messenger, Trilian, Purple, Yahoo, ICQ, etc all interoperated Sorry to remind you, but this never happened. AIM and ICQ eventually interoperate because they were owned by the same company at that point. There was never XMPP federation in the mix here.

Yea, it was really only ever "libpurple let you easily use them all in one app nearly transparently, and many people did". Many did use XMPP under the hood, but afaik almost literally none federated.

Matrix is seemingly trying to leverage that memory, but "there's a bridge bot somewhere that you can run somehow, with extremely widely varying quality / integration smoothness" is rather different.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#449

Post by SkiFire13 »

opan wrote: post #264
SkiFire13 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recently set up a Mumble server on my home server That makes you an even smaller minority unfortunately. Most people are not going to set up a home server.

It's semantics, really. Run the server executable on any computer in your house. Done. If you don't leave your computer on 24/7, the Mumble server isn't up 24/7. Oh well. If you use it to talk to friends, you'll presumably have your computer on when you want to use it yourself anyway.

> If you use it to talk to friends, you'll presumably have your computer on when you want to use it yourself anyway.

I tried this in the past but it didn't work. Now if your friends want to play you need to start the server for them. What if you're not at home? You basically end up making your pc a 24/7 server. Or you need to coordinate so that someone else runs the server in those cases, but that ends up creating more confusion. And let's not start talking about port forwarding issues...

All these issues are solvable, but they add so much friction when all you want to do is play with some friends.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#450

Post by docmars »

pseudalopex wrote: post #348
docmars wrote: post #335

Don't forget Flotilla Social! TeamSpeak also has a newer client, but its design decisions are a little odd. Still worth checking out though.

Could you compare Flotilla Social to alternatives in the article?

I'm not sure I would do the marketing site justice — but check it out, they compare themselves to Discord in their introduction video, it's well done!
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