Came across this on the r/selfhosted community. Still very much in the alpha stages, but it’s already got a Docker image you can try out for yourself, or try out the demo server.
Tried it earlier today, couldn’t get the voice/video chat to work right away on my self-hosted setup but the real-time chat was very snappy. Looks promising.
Aside from
- iso27002 violations
- FHS violation
It looks good!
We’re here to break the law anyway, so, meh
Haven’t had a chance to really look into it, but there’s also spacebar chat which is an open source selfhosted reimplementation of the discord backend that can be used with existing discord clients and bots and stuff. Which depending on how solid the rest of if is, could really help existing discord people move with less effort.
Saw that earlier too, planning to check it out!
Why use this over Matrix?
The user experience for matrix is absolutely dog shit. Anyone who says otherwise is huffing copium.
I have been setting up matrix servers and testing every desktop and mobile client. I cannot present this to my discord group as an alternative.
As much as I want to love matrix, it is a huuuuge pain to set up & maintain.
No E2E-encryption? Can’t find any info about it. Unencrypted = big nope. Looks good otherwise :)
Also completely new with no other contributors. Stay the fuck away from this until its been in development for a while and someone reviewed the code.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Discord isn’t E2EE either. Having data under your control even if not encrypted is a big win.
why use this over the hundreds of messaging platforms that can be self hosted and have e2ee
voice/video chat
then you can use matrix
Can you? Can I? Best I understand it’s a world of pain. If there was a clear winner in the discord-a-like OSS race all these alternatives wouldn’t be coming out of the woodwork. Maybe it’s matrix (with an actually good client, proper decentralization, easy containers), maybe stoat, maybe … I’ve always hated discord anyway and have little need currently, I can wait.
The problem is that there are very few people who are familiar enough with both Discord and Matrix to give a meaningful answer.
Personally, I use both, but for completely different use cases. I do not understand how one could be used as a substitute for the other. Perhaps I’m missing something, or perhaps everyone who thinks Matrix is a good substitute for Discord just don’t use Discord very much.
If you have a small group of friends who occasionally hang out in chat, sure, Matrix is fine. If you’re in dozens of Discord servers, each with dozens (or even hundreds) of channels, and hundreds or thousands of users, no. At least, not with Element. Perhaps there’s a better client out there for that?
Perhaps I’m missing something, or perhaps everyone who thinks Matrix is a good substitute for Discord just don’t use Discord very much.
Seems likely, certainly Matrix has some pretty evangelical supporters. I think you nailed it with discord being more useful for mid sized numbers and having a client that handles it pretty well. I’d also add pretty painless onboarding. An OSS offering that matched it’s primary features (and has E2EE) or has a good framework, roadmap and people to get there would come in pretty clutch as discord goes public and starts monetizing everything in sight. A million (or thousands) independent FOSS ‘discords’ in the night would be a sweet sight.
Sure, pick a server (like you did for Lemmy) and register. Choose any of the supported apps and start.
Yah, did so long ago. Comment still stands. We are in Selfhosted…
I admit i mostly use matrix as an instant messenger, but it works fine for when i need comms with my friends while gaming or when i want to share my screen for something. My university also has its own deployment so all the people around me automatically have an account anyway, which makes it easy to set up groupchats.
Sure it still has some jank to it, but if you look at how janky it used to be even just a year ago, the trajectory is pretty clear to me. Its a very ambitious project that arguably tried to do too much at once in its early days, but i think its here to stay and its only gonna get better. If its not good enough for you today, then just wait another year or two until it is. Its not going away because its being used basically everywhere at this point. Government, healthcare, military, university, private industry, schools, etc.
Fair cop, sounds useful, and I have used it in the past for similar. I was however looking at it in the context of Selfhosted.
its being used basically everywhere at this point. Government, healthcare, military, university, private industry, schools, etc.
True, and I have good hopes for it, partly because of the adoption, you will however note the scale of your examples, basically it’s an IT department project rather than a set and forget selfhosted container (I recognize there’ll always be moderation to do). We shall see, I’m in no hurry.
It sucks for gaming.
I’m in a Discord server with 2000 members. You really want to encrypt and decrypt all incoming and outgoing messages 2000 times? There’s a reason why most E2EE messaging apps don’t really do that for group chats.
Calls are end-to-end encrypted.
I believe you are correct, but this is still very early into development. Hopefully this gets added at some point
Stoat.chat, anyone?
Their registration process is currently hugged to death. Can’t receive verification emails.
Tried a few months ago, the documentation for self hosting was lacking lots of info and now I can’t even find it…
Oh woah, didn’t realize it was self-hostable. I’ll try it out!
This is so vibecoded 🤣 Nawthx
Based on what? A quick peek and I didn’t see any of the stuff I expect from LLMs
Less than a 4 month commit history and one dev. Not impossible maybe, but sure is suspect.
Absolutely not impossible for a skilled dev with lots of free time. This is still an Alpha after all.
Building the full stack of a functional real-time voice and video comms system as a lone dev is not a trivial undertaking.
Even if they put 40/wk or more into it, I’d still be impressed. Like I said, not impossible but these people are rare.
Lolwut??? Did you check the GitHub at all?
What makes you say that?
Check the code
I took a look. Didn’t seem vibe coded to me. Is there a specific area you looked at that looks vibe coded?
Here’s a very simple list of issues that any Node dev would immediately say is generated and has not been cleaned up:
- package.json
- knip (check that tab usage)
- WILDLY fucking stupid Dockerfile
- What directory am I in here??? Note the dupe code because whatever shit tool lost track
- What in the absolute fuck?
I mean I can keep going, but if you even glanced at this and didn’t IMMEDIATELY get it, you are bad at your job.
Your hostility confuses me. I’m not a node dev.
I skimmed some of the server files and didn’t see the normal vibe coded slop I normally see in other languages and was genuinely curious what you saw.
Thank you for your examples.
It’s okay. I’ve got a few side projects in node and I also don’t see anything too out of the ordinary here. If anything this looks more like someone’s first project with some “make it work” rather than being perfect and pretty.
I don’t understand the hostility. Even the bits that this guy talks about (duplicated code?) nothing looked duplicated - sure the names of the folders are the same but that’s more of a naming convention problem when you have a client that needs to connect to servers (or in this case has screens and functionality to connect to servers).
And now I’ve probably spent more time and brainpower on this than I should have just because I was confused.
Then why if you aren’t familiar would you make a comment you didn’t see anything?
Do you randomly walk into other people’s jobs with zero proficiency and speak to how they’re doing at it?
That’s it? That’s why you’re being such an arrogant prick?
Huh. You do you, I guess…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
