@Jes and perfectly sensible for 99% of what people use a community chat platform for- even on discord, where albeit outages are very infrequent, it's not the end of the world if our node goes down for a little while.
@ghost_desu i was genuinely surprised how much the onus was on clients. really ringing home that the FOSS space has more backend developers than frontend designers
@alexia i've edited my post to correct that statement. it was definitely wrong of me to lean on that assumption without reading deeper. i was unaware of this blog post at the time and kinda rushed a surface-level evaluation of fluxer as i already wasn't a huge fan of the "discord-like" model.
that's definitely a blunder on my part, and i think the best thing i can do is give it a better chance so i can evaluate it more fairly. i'll likely make a successor to this original post when i have a greater idea of the options available, with fluxer as a particular point of interest!
@fiore fwiw, while looking into matrix hosting, i found that a webRTC connection over relays (see TURN) was the preferred method of setting up VOIP.
while it would sidestep stock mumble quite substantially, if the architecture is designed to be extensible enough, i don't see why a mumble server couldn't just negotiate a relay link between participants to support even a simple video feed!
@byte i just poked at this and, well, i'm sure someone who loves slack could enjoy it, but most people i know Do Not Love slack
it's marketed as a corporate instant-messaging app, and that's perfectly okay- but that likely hurts its viability as a more community-centric chat app
@piku if the app could be built on top of IRCv3 without stunting its future development (tech debt, limiting features, etc), this sounds good! i haven't looked into those protocols (yet) so can't make an assertion either way
@Jes honestly i just don't think federation is a great fit for a community chat app. this may be a controversial take, but i'm actually perfectly happy with the independent silos provided by teamspeak, mumble, and almost all game servers. i don't really think retaining the rooms and members of dead servers is particularly useful, and i think attempting to build software that carries the burden of everyone else's activity like that in the first place was asking for trouble.
@vv element was the best all-rounder i've seen, but lacks some more outstanding features like custom emoji. cinny has custom emoji, but for some reason lacks basic account management features??
it's really tragic considering what i and many others are trying to do, but if the majority of matrix users are happy, who am i to rock the boat?
current thoughts after experimenting with some proposed discord alternatives recently:
matrix: despite the honourable efforts of instance maintainers, i actually think that client apps are the achilles heel of matrix. every app is missing features i would really rather have, even if the server supports them all. everything feels like a hack built on a hack, and its fragile ecosystem shows. i can't recommend it if you're moving from discord, but i welcome you to try it out and see if it works for you and your friends!
signal: if your primary use for discord is DMs and group chats, you may feel right at home with signal! i just chatted with my girlfriend for about four hours with webcam and screenshare, and it was a very pleasant experience! do note that the desktop app is rough around the edges; signal is a mobile app first.
mumble (in progress): i have a server i've kept as a voice chat fallback for discord for months- if i can convince my friends to Put Up With the huge interface downgrade, i'd love to test it on its strengths. its weaknesses are quite the blight, though. it's open-source, so i wonder could a third-party client claim superiority with a better UX and design.
fluxer:evidently vibe-coded: the commit history dates back to early january with an inhumane amount of code in its first commit (1.4m lines of code across 9k files. ok bud). assuming that didn't kill it for you already, (bold take based on speculation. read the developer's own blog post on fluxer's development before making up your mind on this) i'm concerned about the long-term maintainability of the app. i expect it to be unstable for quite some time, and self-hosting is not recommended by the developer for the time being. on the upside, they seem like a nice fellow! no ill will here. the app's design also blatantly rips from discord, which i suppose is a selling point to some, but i'd personally like to see something new.
stoat (ex. revolt): same "copying discord" comment from before applies. despite being open-source, it seems to sorely lack self-hosting support, which i consider a must-have for my future community chat app. it's failed to take hold of discord's marketshare since it launched, and i suspect there's a good reason for that.
teamspeak: even ignoring controversial military ties, i echo similar sentiments to mumble, except that teamspeak also fails by being closed-source. for my purposes, it's mumble but worse. at least it's a bit prettier, i guess...
@ari@arimelody.space
