There’s been quite a bit of…unsettlement (totally a word) regarding the news that Discord has a new CEO and the company is going public (typically a sign of things going shittier than before).
I’d just like to re-post this which I shared some time ago, if you’ll indulge me in my rare post which isn’t a Steam Deck / Gaming News # post - a rarity for me.
In the end, this is not the be-all-and-end-all alternative, it won’t be for everyone. Matrix exists of course. But this is a nice place. And I thought considering recent events I’d recommend it regardless!
Following is just a copy of what I posted last time. It’s mostly Linux chat, gaming, handhelds (like the Steam Deck), movies and…general chats. Anyway, here’s the post:
So…this one is a bit left-of-field.
A friend of mine (Gardiner Bryant of YouTube - who reports on Linux and the Steam Deck) has started a Revolt server.
What is Revolt?
It’s kinda like a FOSS alternative to Discord. You’ll see the layout is almost a direct copy, and it’s far less polished…but then again you haven’t got the downsides of Discord’s constant upselling either:
Why is this relevant?
…I can hear you ask? Well, so far its just a few developers and creators in there, but I thought of all spaces…maybe those very devs and creators whose work you use and watch…well it might be nice to join in there?
My personal friends who are in here so far are:
-
imLinguin whose GitHub is here - but you may know most as a developer of Heroic Games Launcher
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Eben Bruyns whose GitHub is here - but you may know best as the dev of Junk-Store
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Gardiner himself, of course whose YouTube link is here,
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Lazorne whose project is RetroDECK - my personal fav emulation option for the Steam Deck
-
Kyle Gospo whose project is Bazzite
What is the damn link to the damn server, woman?
I mean, you will have to make an account on Revolt, but it might be interesting to some here. You’re all very welcome!
I will continue using element, signal, and simple x instead. They have all the security and privacy features this product doesn’t.
Love the idea. However the reason I won’t use this is the same reason I don’t use Friendica: no one I know gives half a shit about using FOSS because it’s better for society.
:(
needs federation and then my users will use it.
For now, they want me to go with Matrix.
How does revolt work on the day to day. I tried making a server there to test it, but couldn’t even join a voice call. Also does it have screensharing yet? My friend group uses that pretty regularly.
Revolt doesn’t support screen sharing. The feature request on Github already existed for multiple years and the last update is “Probably won’t happen in the forseable future”. That’s why Revolt isnt a viable screenshare alternativ for my friendgroup.
The newest Teamspeak version finally supports screensharing and works okay. We are using Teamspeak since forever and only used Discord for screensharing, but we will switch fully to Teamspeak once they added hardware acceleration support to the screenshare function.
I was also looking into ts6, but the lack of an updated mobile app was the dealbreaker for us there. (Unless there is one that I somehow missed)
They website advertises mobile support. https://www.teamspeak.com/en/features/overview/
I did a little bit of initial testing, and it looks like there’s a couple issues for my use case. Screensharing is currently restricted to official servers only (so, not available to self-host). The channels are all audio first, and there is no such thing as a text-only channel.
The new teamspeak is neat, but it’s not quite there yet as a discord alternative.
The mobile app is still based on a (very) old Teamspeak version. Good for voice chat, unusable for everything else.
Screensharing also works via P2P in a “screenshare” chat. That way you can already use it while being on selfhosted servers. Complete selfhosted support will be added in later updates though.
But yeah, there are indeed no text only rooms.
You forgot Gardiner’s PeerTube
