Time for a #discord alternatives thread, for no particular reason.
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@mdiluz when you mention hosting the full channel data a user joins do you mean local or any external channel too?
@maikel external channels. The way federation works in Matrix is that the homeserver you connect to is the one serving you channels, even if those channels are on other servers. This generally means that a homeserver has to "host" the data and messages in those channels too.
Fwiw though others have clarified in the replies that you can tweak this a little and it can be less of an issue in practice!
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Here's hoping all that was useful to someone. I spent some time looking for a thread/post/blog like this when I first went searching, but couldn't find it, so here's me paying it forward for the next person.
For others reaching the end of this thread I want to call out the wonderful and similar work over on this blog post: https://taggart-tech.com/discord-alternatives/
Goes into a bunch more detail and has different priorities to me so may well fit your needs better.
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@maikel external channels. The way federation works in Matrix is that the homeserver you connect to is the one serving you channels, even if those channels are on other servers. This generally means that a homeserver has to "host" the data and messages in those channels too.
Fwiw though others have clarified in the replies that you can tweak this a little and it can be less of an issue in practice!
@mdiluz I can imagine the issue with this.
Btw thanks for the explanation. I had no idea it worked the same as Mastodon, caching everything before it reaches you.
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@zeank hadn't heard of it but will be checking it out!
@zeank I've given it a tinker and it seems like self-hosting is quite involved.
The public instance is fascinating, but I'm also not sure what Movim really *is*. Like it's simultaniously chat and a news aggregator?
Do you use it? Would love to hear from folks who do.
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@zeank I've given it a tinker and it seems like self-hosting is quite involved.
The public instance is fascinating, but I'm also not sure what Movim really *is*. Like it's simultaniously chat and a news aggregator?
Do you use it? Would love to hear from folks who do.
@mdiluz for most parts it’s a feature rich, modern XMPP client. That amongst others focuses on good UX regarding chatrooms and offers A/V calls on top of that. And yes, it also has those blogging, news aggregator features. They plan to introduce a concept of „spaces“, which comes close to what Discord offers, a community space, a collection of rooms etc (yet to be defined what exactly it will be).
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@mdiluz for most parts it’s a feature rich, modern XMPP client. That amongst others focuses on good UX regarding chatrooms and offers A/V calls on top of that. And yes, it also has those blogging, news aggregator features. They plan to introduce a concept of „spaces“, which comes close to what Discord offers, a community space, a collection of rooms etc (yet to be defined what exactly it will be).
@mdiluz And yes, it’s on the heavy side, which is why I’m not hosting it myself at this point. I’d have to upgrade my machine first. Personally I prefer just slim, regular XMPP clients. They do all I need already.
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For others reaching the end of this thread I want to call out the wonderful and similar work over on this blog post: https://taggart-tech.com/discord-alternatives/
Goes into a bunch more detail and has different priorities to me so may well fit your needs better.
@mdiluz Thank you for the list! I'd like to bring your attention to Fluxer, which is a clone of Discord. Like, almost identical. And they have their own version of Nitro but at the old price point of Nitro when Discord started.
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@maswan I'm kind of surprised a fork hasn't popped up tbh. Anyway yeah thanks for the info?
@maswan Curious if you can help - I booted up a self-hosted RC instance and didn't really get a chance to sign up to a plan or not, but it's very unclear to me which "plan" I'm on, and the admin page shows only 50 "seats" available.
Any idea how to use the "Community" plan?
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@maswan Curious if you can help - I booted up a self-hosted RC instance and didn't really get a chance to sign up to a plan or not, but it's very unclear to me which "plan" I'm on, and the admin page shows only 50 "seats" available.
Any idea how to use the "Community" plan?
@maswan tbf might be that https://github.com/RocketChat/rocketchat-compose doesn't allow the "community" edition easilt
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@mdiluz Thank you for the list! I'd like to bring your attention to Fluxer, which is a clone of Discord. Like, almost identical. And they have their own version of Nitro but at the old price point of Nitro when Discord started.
@coffeegm nice, first I've heard. I'll.check it out and add to the thread
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@coffeegm nice, first I've heard. I'll.check it out and add to the thread
@coffeegm well I have to say this is one of the most fishy things a website has ever asked me
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@coffeegm well I have to say this is one of the most fishy things a website has ever asked me
@mdiluz Oof, I haven't tried accessing the website from a mobile device so that's the first time I've seen it too. Weird.
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@darkuncle it's an interesting point for sure. I think the management of multiple channels (most of the time 10+) is quite key. That's kind of what separates these tools out from Signal, Telegram, Threema, etc.
@mdiluz I miss IRC sometimes, but I really do like the introduction of GIFs, reactions, etc. that have made chat a richer experience in the past 30 years
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Mattermost sometimes comes up
* Fully released
* Limited free use*
* "Open core"?
* Self-hostable
* Some E2E?
* Supports calls
* No web app (*correction: appears to have one)Mattermost is interesting, but seems to be far more of an enterprise solution. It's even hard to figure out *what* you get from self hosting, what actually is open source, etc.
I think it's probably worth investigating further if you're looking for something for your company/teams?
@mdiluz MM has a web app (= you can use browser, or you can use mobile client) , appears to have been a decent choice for one project I'm adjacent to (~3K users), hasn't yet done any extractive shit to them *that I'm aware of*
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@maswan tbf might be that https://github.com/RocketChat/rocketchat-compose doesn't allow the "community" edition easilt
@mdiluz
Hmm. I haven't done a fresh install this decade, but I was under the expression that it was still possible somehow. Just that their install wizard etc push you to "free" or one of the paid plans. -
@mdiluz MM has a web app (= you can use browser, or you can use mobile client) , appears to have been a decent choice for one project I'm adjacent to (~3K users), hasn't yet done any extractive shit to them *that I'm aware of*
@mdiluz finding out that MM has accepted YC funding and is a US based company makes me less confident about it having a sustainable place in community future
Also this, ew: https://tech.lgbt/@alxndr/116047470479051482
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@maswan tbf might be that https://github.com/RocketChat/rocketchat-compose doesn't allow the "community" edition easilt
@mdiluz
I also get some updates now and then on the github issue about the install wizard insisting on agreeing to their cloud dara policy, something that there are workarounds for. Also a self-hosting hostile thing, for which we probably cannot agree to due to legal reasons (and don't need to for self-hosted, it's all about their cloud services). But there is a wizard=done workaroundIt is rather sad, because for a while up until about 2024 they had self-hostable or hosted by them options.
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@mdiluz
I also get some updates now and then on the github issue about the install wizard insisting on agreeing to their cloud dara policy, something that there are workarounds for. Also a self-hosting hostile thing, for which we probably cannot agree to due to legal reasons (and don't need to for self-hosted, it's all about their cloud services). But there is a wizard=done workaroundIt is rather sad, because for a while up until about 2024 they had self-hostable or hosted by them options.
@maswan honestly I'm quite surprised there's no community fork maintained just yet, seems ripe for the taking
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@maswan honestly I'm quite surprised there's no community fork maintained just yet, seems ripe for the taking
@mdiluz Yeah, I am too. I rate the chat itself very favorable to slack and mattermost from a user experience.
I guess the code is really hard to package and maintain, maybe on purpose.
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@mdiluz finding out that MM has accepted YC funding and is a US based company makes me less confident about it having a sustainable place in community future
Also this, ew: https://tech.lgbt/@alxndr/116047470479051482
@xurizaemon oh good point, I should really have been looking into which ones were european too!
