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Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

blog.zulip.org

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Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#71

Post by rishig »

ciupicri wrote: post #70
zestyping wrote: post #33

It's really hard to get a sense of how Zulip works without any screenshots or videos anywhere on zulip.org, just general descriptions like "the world's most productive group chat" and "email threading model." The fastest way to find out how it works is to go to https://chat.zulip.org/accounts/login/ and click "Log in with GitHub". They really need to make that path easier to find.

"Log in with GitHub" didn't work for me. GitHub asked me to authorize Zulip then nothing happened, I can't login.

You'll want to sign up first, at https://chat.zulip.org/register/.

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#72

Post by rendaw »

distances wrote: post #61
voidmain wrote: post #6

We used Zulip (then a commercial product) at FoundationDB, and really liked it. We had teams in two cities. The threading, which they sell as the core feature, is nice, and does make it more usable for "important" conversations than purely chronological chat. It also makes it easier to screen out conversations you don't care about. But IMO the killer feature is the "all messages" view that merges chosen streams in mo…

> The threading, which they sell as the core feature, is nice, and does make it more usable for "important" conversations than purely chronological chat. It also makes it easier to screen out conversations you don't care about. Does anyone have experience how this compares to the threading in Flowdock? I like their threading the best between the ones I've tried, but it doesn't allow you to skip or hide threads that a…

As news about Slack becomes fewer and farther in-between, reminders of how much more usable Flowdock was also fade from view. I'm left with a dead emptiness in my heart and a general pessimism about corporate communications.

Is there _any_ service with Flowdock style threading now? XMPP clients? Game chats?

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#73

Post by rishig »

suyash wrote: post #48
zestyping wrote: post #33

It's really hard to get a sense of how Zulip works without any screenshots or videos anywhere on zulip.org, just general descriptions like "the world's most productive group chat" and "email threading model." The fastest way to find out how it works is to go to https://chat.zulip.org/accounts/login/ and click "Log in with GitHub". They really need to make that path easier to find.

I was trying to learn about it as well but gave up because how bad the homepage is, no relevant information or screenshots. I'm sticking with Slack.

Thanks for the feedback suyash. We're working on landing pages; weren't expecting a hacker news launch today :).

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#74

Post by zingmars »

I love Zulip. I really wish other IM clients implemented functionality similar to Zulip's threading. It allows for easily filtering converstations and makes reading history that much easier.

That said, what Zulip lacks right now is polish. Server installation for example is a mess. You basically need a dedicated Debian machine to install it. There is a docker image that I'm using, but it's rather unstable (if I will have to make changes to the configuration, I fear I will have to spend hours trying to fix it). You also NEED to have a SSL certificate which means that testing in a local network isn't as painless as simply installing the server. There's also problems with the search function (it barely works), lacks things like archiving topics (or hiding them), enabling app notifications using their Google Play App requires you to send them an email and a few other things. Their apps also feel sluggish. They have an old Cordova app that is slowly losing compatibility with the server and a new app that is fairly slow. The desktop app is an electron app and it also has some issues.

Thankfully issue reporting is fairly painless.

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#75

Post by fiatjaf »

snowwindwaves wrote: post #26
fiatjaf wrote: post #25

> The project survived my becoming a parent in December and taking 2 months off to bond with my baby daughter Lily. For me, it was a great stress test of Zulip’s catch-up experience; I was able to catch up on over 20,000 messages of chat history when I returned, following up on more than 100 conversations that needed my attention. So is that what you've supposed to do when you become a parent? Stop doing everything e…

I think people normally take some time off work when they have a child. Does that seem strange to you?

I asked first.

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#76

Post by stevenicr »

moderators? admin panel?

banning users via subnet, hostname, cidr?

These are the things I need in a chat replacement.

I've discussed possibly funding these things for riot / matrix not sure I can afford it, but I know I can't afford not to have these kinds of options in a public chat system.

looking at the features, I'd need a way to have the server download any images / attachments, check for viruses, strip any exif data, before showing preview to the room. (evil actors host an image on their server, post it to the room, and bam they have everyone in the room's ip addy, at that point everyone's router had better be updated.

Looks interesting, and I am looking to replace a java / flash chat system from a decade ago that is yet to be beat sadly.

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#77

Post by distances »

rendaw wrote: post #72
distances wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The threading, which they sell as the core feature, is nice, and does make it more usable for "important" conversations than purely chronological chat. It also makes it easier to screen out conversations you don't care about. Does anyone have experience how this compares to the threading in Flowdock? I like their threading the best between the ones I've tried, but it doesn't allow you to skip or hide threads that a…

As news about Slack becomes fewer and farther in-between, reminders of how much more usable Flowdock was also fade from view. I'm left with a dead emptiness in my heart and a general pessimism about corporate communications. Is there _any_ service with Flowdock style threading now? XMPP clients? Game chats?

I guess it's obvious but Flowdock itself is alive and under active development.

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#78

Post by rkangel »

fiatjaf wrote: post #25

> The project survived my becoming a parent in December and taking 2 months off to bond with my baby daughter Lily. For me, it was a great stress test of Zulip’s catch-up experience; I was able to catch up on over 20,000 messages of chat history when I returned, following up on more than 100 conversations that needed my attention. So is that what you've supposed to do when you become a parent? Stop doing everything e…

> than never look at your child again

On what basis do you even suggest that that's what happened? They say that they took 2 months off after the birth of their child (which seems reasonable) and then had to catch up on their messaging when they got back.

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#79

Post by rkangel »

haffla wrote: post #57

Zulip is using Python and Postgresql. Is this a great choice of stack for a chat app? I'd love to know how Zulip performs with hundreds of concurrent users. I am currently looking into Rocket.Chat which is based on Meteor (NodeJS) and MongoDB, a stack which, for me, seems better suited for this kind of app. But hey, I don't know, I haven't done performance tests or anything. Does anyone know about any hard limits wit…

PostgreSQL is really really good, for any normal amount of data, or any normal number of users. If you can make Postgre do most of the work, it doesn't hugely matter what you build on it.

If you're Facebook or Google scale, you may need something with a different performance characteristics, but 99.9% of the world doesn't. Except that even Facebook doesn't: as I understand it they still use carefully sharded MySQL.

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#80

Post by ciupicri »

The install procedure [1] looks like bad a joke.

> You’ll need an Ubuntu system that satisfies the installation requirements.

So if I'm using RHEL, Fedora, Arch or any other Linux distribution, tough luck. If they're supporting only Ubuntu, they could have at least created some deb packages.

There is an install script, but no details about what's going on under the hood or explanations of how to do it manually; what other software is required, e.g. for the database, how Zulip uses it, what libraries or other kind of dependencies it has, etc.

[1]: http://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/install.htm...

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