I know there is revolt as a FOSS alternative to discord but it's not federated.
Matrix and clients for it like Element have always been my go to for federated chat like discord/teams/mattersmost. The main missing feature is voice channels imho.
The lack of voice channels is huge for something that looks like it is trying to be a discord alternative. I really can’t believe it still isn’t really implemented.
Honestly though even setting aside the lack of voice channels there is a bigger issue. Getting people to switch to something like matrix. I have so much trouble trying to get my group to switch to ANYTHING new. Tried to get them to switch from iMessage to telegram or signal. They tried it for a day and then went back. Getting them to switch from razer comms to discord was even a removed back in the day. People just don’t like trying new things.
Sorry for the rant I just find this endlessly frustrating. Lol.
To be fair, Matrix is not exactly trying to be a "discord alternative" so much as an "all messaging platforms alternative", but it's still embarrassing that this feature is not present yet. It's been heavily requested by the discord crowd for years, and should have been a higher priority.
As for friends switching, at least Matrix has bridges and puppeting/double-puppeting support. Unfortunately, I don't think discord voice channel bridging/puppeting will ever work, so it's really not that useful in this instance. I know ripcord has voice channel interop so it is technically possible, but it's probably too hacky/abusive to put in officially, and it would probably only work with puppeting.
Calling other people's work embarrassing is easy when you're not the one building or contributing to the codebase. Implementing voice chat is no easy task, and it's all done voluntarily in people's free time.
it’s all done voluntarily in people’s free time.
Firstly, Matrix has plenty of paid developers that work on it - this is not even close to a passion project made by volunteers in their free time.
Secondly, I'm not saying the work is embarrassing (the work is nothing short of incredible), I'm saying the priority to leave this feature on the backburner for years is. They likely ended up with more important priorities and didn't have enough resources to dedicate, but on a practical level the lack of hotjoin voice channels sticks out like a sore thumb to new users.
I've been championing Matrix for about 4-5 years now, and it's been so long since this feature was requested/promised that it's at the point where I'm too "embarrassed" to try to convince people to switch anymore. People just expect this feature in a messaging platform nowadays, and if it's not there they're going to leave immediately. When this makes it into stable with a good UX, I'll be back on the new user pipeline.
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Matrix Spaces are broken enough. Even Conduit doesn't support that feature. Don't expect Matrix to fully resemble Discord, not even Cinny. Matrix is meant for secure conversations.
I feel your pain. I once wanted to guide my buddies away from WA and had them in a Telegram group. And you know what the comment was? 'Boring, nothing happening here.'
That's like complaining that nothing happens in a phone booth.... everyone, except for me, went back to WA. 🤷
WA is better atleast you got E2E encryption there. It works or not well that's an another question.
What's WA?
WhatsApp
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Try changing your group.
Aren't voice and video calls (basically VoIP) what Turn (coturn) is supposed to support?
TURN is only used as a relay. It's just a low(er)level transport layer, not specific to VoIP. Typically it is used as fallback when P2P communication between the attendees is not possible (for example due to a restrictive firewall).
I hear everyone talk about element but when i go to check it out i see it is minimum 50 users. Am i missing the smaller tier?
To clarify, that's for them hosting the service for you, and is intended for enterprises mainly. You can self host element, since it's open source, while only paying your own server costs, or just use an existing instance like on https://app.element.io
Self hosting might make sense on that small of a scale.
Element is kinda janky and crashes all the time for me. And also the UI is very confusing to use.
I haven't had Element crash on me in a while, but that was a big annoyance for me too for a long time.
Matrix is federated and pretty good. It’s not ActivityPub though…
Matrix is amazing.
Matrix is your best bet.
I also like it very much.
You're looking for Matrix, a federated, encrypted communication protocol used by clients like Element, fluffychat, etc.
I just wish element was in the official Debian repos. It sucks having to add another repo
If you have Flatpak setup on Debian, Element can be found on and installed from Flathub!
I use web app & it's good enough.
Modern IRC combined with a Mumble server works pretty well.
For smaller groups XMPP is also fine, but group calls are not widely implemented yet.
Jitsi-meet also works ok for voice chat.
Revolt had us all intrigued, but without federation, it's like a pizza without the cheese.
Enter, Matrix and Element - FOSS, decentralized, and yes, federated.
Element, built on Matrix, provides real-time communication with end-to-end encryption. But voice channels, alas, still our Achilles heel.
Yet, remember, we're the pioneers of this brave new digital world. A federated voice solution may not exist now, but give it time. We've got some amazing and selfless coders chomping at the bit!
Matrix comes close
Old school Mumble, while is not federated, is still decentralized and perfect for game communication.
I hear a lot about Matrix, but the instructions for self hosting seem very complicated. If anyone has a simpler method, or script I’d be happy to use it.
Looking good. though I'm not looking for self hosted solution.
fediverse but not selfhosted? i'm not sure. that might almost be opposing requirements.
@hendrik@zexu I believe that Rochko (spelling?) foresaw his software being run on many small instances versus several large players. Hence that is why I think scalability wasn't an emphasis at the time. From the little I understand of Ruby is that it doesn't scale very well. I think the idea behind Sidekiq is to mitigate that problem.
I mean, i don't wanna host it. i need plug & play type thing.
Sure. I'm always kinda uncertain why people ask for libre software and then not want it for the same things i like about it. If you want something plug and play and decentralization isn't important to you: Maybe you don't need an alternative and Discord is the right thing for you.
Otherwise it's not the software (architecture), you just want to go to an existing instance and let someone else do the self-hosting for you.
Aether is kinda like that, but they support "free speech" and there are subs with slurs as the title. Use at your own risk, I guess.
Matrix and clients for it like Element have always been my go to for federated chat like discord/teams/mattersmost. The main missing feature is voice channels imho.
Which is coming. Eventually. At some point.
Man I hope so! The beta is out for element support https://call.element.io
Oh hey I remember you from my reddit post :D
Hello! Welcome to greener pastures.
This interaction made my day, love this place
The lack of voice channels is huge for something that looks like it is trying to be a discord alternative. I really can’t believe it still isn’t really implemented.
Honestly though even setting aside the lack of voice channels there is a bigger issue. Getting people to switch to something like matrix. I have so much trouble trying to get my group to switch to ANYTHING new. Tried to get them to switch from iMessage to telegram or signal. They tried it for a day and then went back. Getting them to switch from razer comms to discord was even a removed back in the day. People just don’t like trying new things.
Sorry for the rant I just find this endlessly frustrating. Lol.
To be fair, Matrix is not exactly trying to be a "discord alternative" so much as an "all messaging platforms alternative", but it's still embarrassing that this feature is not present yet. It's been heavily requested by the discord crowd for years, and should have been a higher priority.
As for friends switching, at least Matrix has bridges and puppeting/double-puppeting support. Unfortunately, I don't think discord voice channel bridging/puppeting will ever work, so it's really not that useful in this instance. I know ripcord has voice channel interop so it is technically possible, but it's probably too hacky/abusive to put in officially, and it would probably only work with puppeting.
Calling other people's work embarrassing is easy when you're not the one building or contributing to the codebase. Implementing voice chat is no easy task, and it's all done voluntarily in people's free time.
Firstly, Matrix has plenty of paid developers that work on it - this is not even close to a passion project made by volunteers in their free time.
Secondly, I'm not saying the work is embarrassing (the work is nothing short of incredible), I'm saying the priority to leave this feature on the backburner for years is. They likely ended up with more important priorities and didn't have enough resources to dedicate, but on a practical level the lack of hotjoin voice channels sticks out like a sore thumb to new users.
I've been championing Matrix for about 4-5 years now, and it's been so long since this feature was requested/promised that it's at the point where I'm too "embarrassed" to try to convince people to switch anymore. People just expect this feature in a messaging platform nowadays, and if it's not there they're going to leave immediately. When this makes it into stable with a good UX, I'll be back on the new user pipeline.
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
Matrix Spaces are broken enough. Even Conduit doesn't support that feature. Don't expect Matrix to fully resemble Discord, not even Cinny. Matrix is meant for secure conversations.
I feel your pain. I once wanted to guide my buddies away from WA and had them in a Telegram group. And you know what the comment was? 'Boring, nothing happening here.' That's like complaining that nothing happens in a phone booth.... everyone, except for me, went back to WA. 🤷
WA is better atleast you got E2E encryption there. It works or not well that's an another question.
What's WA?
WhatsApp
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
Try changing your group.
Aren't voice and video calls (basically VoIP) what Turn (coturn) is supposed to support?
https://matrix-org.github.io/synapse/v1.41/turn-howto.html
TURN is only used as a relay. It's just a low(er)level transport layer, not specific to VoIP. Typically it is used as fallback when P2P communication between the attendees is not possible (for example due to a restrictive firewall).
I hear everyone talk about element but when i go to check it out i see it is minimum 50 users. Am i missing the smaller tier?
To clarify, that's for them hosting the service for you, and is intended for enterprises mainly. You can self host element, since it's open source, while only paying your own server costs, or just use an existing instance like on https://app.element.io
Self hosting might make sense on that small of a scale.
Element is kinda janky and crashes all the time for me. And also the UI is very confusing to use.
I haven't had Element crash on me in a while, but that was a big annoyance for me too for a long time.
Matrix is federated and pretty good. It’s not ActivityPub though…
Matrix is amazing.
Matrix is your best bet.
I also like it very much.
You're looking for Matrix, a federated, encrypted communication protocol used by clients like Element, fluffychat, etc.
I just wish element was in the official Debian repos. It sucks having to add another repo
If you have Flatpak setup on Debian, Element can be found on and installed from Flathub!
I use web app & it's good enough.
Modern IRC combined with a Mumble server works pretty well.
For smaller groups XMPP is also fine, but group calls are not widely implemented yet.
Jitsi-meet also works ok for voice chat.
Revolt had us all intrigued, but without federation, it's like a pizza without the cheese.
Enter, Matrix and Element - FOSS, decentralized, and yes, federated.
Element, built on Matrix, provides real-time communication with end-to-end encryption. But voice channels, alas, still our Achilles heel.
Yet, remember, we're the pioneers of this brave new digital world. A federated voice solution may not exist now, but give it time. We've got some amazing and selfless coders chomping at the bit!
Matrix comes close
Old school Mumble, while is not federated, is still decentralized and perfect for game communication.
I hear a lot about Matrix, but the instructions for self hosting seem very complicated. If anyone has a simpler method, or script I’d be happy to use it.
This repo does a great job of simplifying it. The deployment process is completely automated with ansible, has the best documentation you could ask for https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy
Awesome thanks so much!
It is complicated. Most complex thing I've ever set up.
I don't think there's a simplified version, every step is needed.
I am self hosting matrix synapse, it's actually much easier than XMPP with SSL certs generated by Caddy. Ejabberd doesn't play well with them.
EDIT: with docker.
Maybe thats what Spacebar is aiming for?
https://github.com/spacebarchat/spacebarchat
Looking good. though I'm not looking for self hosted solution.
fediverse but not selfhosted? i'm not sure. that might almost be opposing requirements.
@hendrik @zexu I believe that Rochko (spelling?) foresaw his software being run on many small instances versus several large players. Hence that is why I think scalability wasn't an emphasis at the time. From the little I understand of Ruby is that it doesn't scale very well. I think the idea behind Sidekiq is to mitigate that problem.
I mean, i don't wanna host it. i need plug & play type thing.
Sure. I'm always kinda uncertain why people ask for libre software and then not want it for the same things i like about it. If you want something plug and play and decentralization isn't important to you: Maybe you don't need an alternative and Discord is the right thing for you. Otherwise it's not the software (architecture), you just want to go to an existing instance and let someone else do the self-hosting for you.
Aether is kinda like that, but they support "free speech" and there are subs with slurs as the title. Use at your own risk, I guess.
Awww I thought this was asking about Discourse :(
sorry ^_°