Its looking like Microsoft is gonna buy Discord. Preferably open source, and has a big userbase, and has Windows and Linux option. (but mainly windows because i only game on windows now.)

    • warmaster@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 year ago

      Not really a Discord alternative until they ship voice channels. Revolt chat is a straight up Discord clone, but it’s not federated, they have really obfuscated the way to self host it, and their releases are way older than what the main server is running. Plus, it’s developed by kids who don’t give a crap about anything.

      So, Matrix is the best chat out there, but it’s not a Discord alternative.

      • Scrabbone@discuss.tchncs.de
        5·
        1 year ago

        The matrix client element has video and voice chats as beta feature. I use it and it works fine for me. I can absolutely recommend Element as a Discord alternative.

        • since@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          3·
          1 year ago

          Element is the best one I’ve found, at least for DMs. I don’t use servers and as such the way they work on Element still deeply confuses me, but if you work your way into it like with Lemmy it probably works.

      • TwistedTurtle@monero.town
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m using Matrix with Coturn integration for voice. Works great. There’s an addon for video too but I don’t use that so never added it.

  • quantum@lemmy.ml
    2·
    3 years ago

    A lot of the comments mention matrix but also how it’s “not quite there yet”. This might sound a bit discouraging, but they’ve made some huge strides over the past few years, to the point where some authors believe that they should slow down a little.

    So while I agree that matrix isn’t a replacement for discord right now, I’d also like to add that it’s much more viable than it was even a year ago. I’d say it’ll be the obvious choice in another year or so.

      • testman@lemmy.ml
        1·
        3 years ago

        yes, completely FOSS

        it’s audio only, but allows advanced room/channel management

        Element (Matrix) however, can embed Jitsi Meet (FOSS Zoom alternative), which allows room members to use audio and video (camera or screen sharing) at the same time.

        So Element is much closer to Discord than Mumble is.

  • LarrySwinger2@lemmy.ml
    1·
    3 years ago

    Another good one is Rocket Chat. It’s the most feature complete alternative I’ve tried. And there’s Mattermost and Session, although that last one’s a bit different, it’s a fork of Signal so there are invite-only groups, no list of channels, and you don’t see people come online or go offline. Out of these, only Rocket Chat has an established userbase, the others are more focused on self-hosting or creating your own group.

  • CULTPONY@lemmy.ml
    1·
    3 years ago

    A few people have mentioned the issues with Matrix but I think a part of it is the severe lack of community moderation tools. Something like a mandatory pinned rules channel would help for communities (possibly announcements too, communities are a client convention atm so not very useful). There isn’t a good story for letting bots automod channels (useful when you get raids of about 2k to 4k messages per second), which also hangs on the server not being on the performance level to easily handle more massive servers if it gets raided for whatever reason.

    So at the moment, there is no alternative that isn’t also a centralized single point of failure.

    I’m just hoping one day someone writes some chat client that pivots over ActivityPub for discovery, sadly my ADHD will probably prevent me being that someone.

    • poVoq@lemmy.ml
      1·
      3 years ago

      What you want is perfectly possible with IRC. There are also nice looking web-clients like Convos or The Lounge that are as user friendly as Discord once they are set up.

      • CULTPONY@lemmy.ml
        01·
        3 years ago

        Well, no, because IRC lacks communities like Discord has them (called Servers there). I can’t coherently organize a community over several channels. IRC also has issues with netsplits as it doesn’t really have support for HA architecture. There is no chatbacklog either. And moderation cannot delete previous messages. Atleast not out of the box and requiring client support. There is also no option to require people to have created an account X minutes ago to be able to join or that moderators must setup 2FA to be able to access the server.

        IRC is the absolute minimum of what can be called a “chat”, it has no tools that fit what modern and safe communities need.

        • poVoq@lemmy.ml
          1·
          3 years ago

          You have seriously outdated information about IRC. Nearly all of what you describe can be done with one of the above mentioned clients and a modern IRC daemon like Oragono or a bouncer like ZNC.

          • CULTPONY@lemmy.ml
            1·
            3 years ago

            Why should my users need to install or use a bouncer to be able to enjoy a fundamental function like “chat backlog”?

            And this still fixes none of the issues related to growing a cohesive community on IRC. As mentioned, I can’t enforce 2FA/Phone/Email for users/moderators last I checked, not without making them use 1 specific client, so why bother at all?

            Heck, IRC doesn’t even support proxied previews of links posted, nearly all of the IRC clients that have it will leak your IP without some extra care taken. This is a risk for many users that they won’t understand without guidance as most of them aren’t technophiles. A lot of them will simply jump board to discord facing such issues, and then nothing it won at all.

            • poVoq@lemmy.ml
              1·
              3 years ago

              If you are setting up an IRC server, you just provide also a bouncer or use an daemon like Oragono that has it included… really not rocket science. Just think of an IRC server as a set of micro-services ;)

              NICKSERV does support Email and probably other types of account verification and is client independent. Phone would obviously required a 3rd party service, but such API access is probably easy to add (not that I would recommend using such an anti-feature).

              And image/preview proxying is very much supported by the web clients I mentioned above. And AFAIK ZNC also does that client independent.

              I really feel like you are making up excuses not to consider IRC. Sure there are old clients that do not offer all the functionality you want. But those are just optional, most users will use the client offered by you and that really isn’t any different from another chat system, just that those usually do not support 3rd party clients at all.

  • manemjeff@lemmy.ml
    21·
    3 years ago

    Element. Right now they’re implementing spaces, it’s basically directories for rooms and it’s quite neat imo. Far better than discord if the mods know how to use it, in which case, they probably will.

    • Tgraswe@lemmy.ml
      2·
      3 years ago

      I think you shouldn’t call it “Element”, but rather “Matrix” to avoid misconceptions about the nature of it and to give advantage to other clients.

      • manemjeff@lemmy.ml
        2·
        3 years ago

        Although I do realize the misconception in my naming, but for non-technical person, I would rather call it Element rather than Matrix because the application that’s in play store and many more sites is called Element. YES I’m aware that there’re alternative clients, but I would rather call it element so non-tech people would better recognize it this way.

        Anyway, I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Element, is in fact, Matrix/Element, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Matrix plus Element. Element is not a communication protocol unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Matrix ecosystem made useful by the client, homeservers and vital system components comprising a full end to end communication solution defined by Matrix organization.

        Many computer users run a modified version of the Matrix’s client every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of Matrix/Element which is widely used today is often called Element, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically part of the Matrix ecosystem, developed by the Matrix Organization.

        There really is an Element, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the Matrix ecosystem they use. Matrix is the protocol: the specification in the system that manages the resources to the other programs that the servers run. The protocol is an essential part of the Matrix Ecosystem, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete end to end solution of the server and clients. Element is normally used in combination with server to make the whole system. All the so-called Element distributions are really distributions of Matrix/Element!