It seems like the FOSS community is continuing to grow, and FOSS apps keep getting better (Immich reallh blew my mind recently), which is a big win 😎 but there are still many apps I use that I would kill for an open source alternative. I am curious what you guys think? Are there any apps you’d love alternatives for?

  • @[email protected]
    3•2 months ago

    If you’re talking about voice channels specifically, then there is Mumble.

    If you’re talking about chat rooms, old school solution is IRC and we have XMPP that works fine for most people.

    • @[email protected]
      5•2 months ago

      Mumble needs a server, iirc

      Edit to be more precise, it needs you to host a server of your own

      • poVoq
        6•2 months ago

        I let you in on a secret: Discord also needs a server 🙃

          • @[email protected]
            3•2 months ago

            But for real, if you can’t / don’t want to host your own server, just use any server from hundreds of available servers.

            • @[email protected]
              1•2 months ago

              Oh I’s been a while. My clan hosted our own mumble server, back in the day. Didn’t know there was a lot of public ones nowadays…

              • @[email protected]
                2•2 months ago

                There are even services that give you free temporary servers. I don’t know why anyone would use that instead of just finding any server and use a free room if you just want to talk with friends, but well, it exists.

                You go to a service like that, press a button, it generates you some random port number and password, then you connect to that server with mumble and become an admin of it. The server is temporary and gets automatically destroyed after some fixed period (usually something like 24 hours).

                Also what I tried to do with my friends is run Yggdrasil and connect directly via IPv6 (so I run Yggdrasil and launch a mumble server, and all my friends enter my IPv6 address) and that works too, so no need to have public IPs or domain names to use Mumble anymore.

                Yggdrasil is such a cool thing, loving it.

      • KillingTimeItselfEnglish
        2•2 months ago

        yeah, host one. It’s not expensive. Certainly cheaper than paying for discord nitro (which you don’t have to do if you want shitty audio/video streaming quality and no emojus features)

    • @[email protected]
      3•2 months ago

      No I meant an app that looks similar and contains most of the features (servers specifically) so it’s easier for not tech savvy users to get into. Someone suggested Revolt but its privacy (as in sending the data to not privacy respecting third parties) is questionable so idk if I can consider it a good enough alternative

      • TechognitoEnglish
        1•2 months ago

        Something like Revolt could maybe be a replacement for discord

      • @[email protected]English
        1•2 months ago

        There is a project, but it’s really early in it’s development. It’s called Cabal. Has a nice desktop client, looks kinda like Discord. It’s p2p, so no server required. BUT AGAIN, VERY EARLY IN DEVELOPMENT.

        https://github.com/cabal-club

        Not something you should use, but look out for how the development is going.

        • @[email protected]
          1•2 months ago

          There seem to be quite a few projects. It’s slowing the development down. It would be better if everyone focused on one. But peer to peer is interesting. I’m wondering how much disk space it will use a day if I’m in a group with like 100k people though