this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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Selfhosted

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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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Spacebar is a free, opensource selfhostable discord-compatible chat, voice and video platform.

  • Discord-compatible (Use all your custom clients/bots with minimal changes)
  • Selfhostable (Server)
  • Open Source (GitHub Organization)
  • Configurable (Configure every aspect and limits to your needs)
  • Decentralized (no abuse of power and doesn't have a single point of failure)
  • Extendable (secure and cross-platform plugin system)
  • Themeable (cross-platform theme system with design editor)
  • Secure (publicly audited and hosted FOSS software for transparent foundation in terms of security)
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[–] warmaster 171 points 1 month ago (2 children)

https://docs.spacebar.chat/faq/

Currently there is no voice or video support in any Spacebar instance. This is a very difficult feature to get working, especially given that we must implement it the exact same way as Discord.com for client compatibility. We would be incredibly thankful for any assistance.

Damn.

[–] Evotech 57 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Discuss without voice, might aswell use IRC

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Mumble is so underrated. It does one job and but does it very well.

[–] chalupapocalypse 49 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yeah I'd love to move my gang off discord but getting them to go back to team speak or vent is not happening

[–] Serinus 50 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Mumble is another strong, open source, self-hosted option.

[–] Kuinox 15 points 1 month ago (6 children)

If only it didn't looked like a 20 year old software.

[–] v0rld 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Maybe it's just me but I think the Mumble UI is way better than the Discord UI

[–] Kuinox 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't know about the UX, but if you want peoples to use your app, it need to look nice.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I find the login page of discord intelorable, it has ugly EULA on it that I will never sign

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Yay mumble!

And I agree: it's better. I think it's faster and that, IMHO, is where the power is. It can look boring like a hammer as long as it's intuitive ... like a hammer.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Some of the best stuff in the world looks like it's 20 years past a prime that isn't, because they're truly good eternal.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

It's voice chat, you choose a server and then minimize to tray, you never have to look at it...

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Same, if only teamspeak supported screen sharing / streaming, then it would be fine.

[–] glimse 5 points 1 month ago

I thought discord streaming was so dumb until I was trying to reach my friend something in a game. Now we use it a couple times per month, it's great. I hate that I like Discord lol

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Why not just use Matrix? I thought it was the goto FOSS and decentralized Discord alternative.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Matrix doesn't offer the same experience as discord. I'm sorry but it doesn't. I set up my own to compare to see if my friend group would like it, and it was quite a step backwards. Even in it's best platform element it was missing a lot of stuff from discord.

So, things like this I'd be very interested to watch. Revolt looked the most promising but it didn't offer federation, and I wasn't going to make everyone have a separate accountjust for our server

So this will be interesting. I will need at least voice to get them to come over, but I'll watch this project closely

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Voice & screensharing seems to be the thing holding all of my friends chained to discord

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean, it's a valid reason. I originally joined Discord back in 2016 because of it's easy to use voice. It became the standard for voice chat. Before that I had been using the Xbox party chat and other garbage voice systems.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

We were using Skype... Dark days.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Element seems to have voice and video chats in beta right now, and they plan to implement it into the Element application, so it looks like it is on the way at least.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I think the original question could be about the protocol. Why not use Matrix as the protocol for the project? No one is doing the work to bring a Matrix-based Discord alternative because they're a) on Discord b) creatin IRC face-lifts like Element c) refusing to quit IRC d) making projects with bespoke protocols like this one. It's incredibly frustrating.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Unusably laggy no matter what instance you use.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

i cant confirm that. especially in the light of the new sliding sync implemented in elementx. it’s a nightmare for admins but for users it should be fine

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] mystik 21 points 1 month ago

Revolt is kinda “centralized”. You can host your own version, but they seem to actively discourage you from doing so.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Very bad. Spacebar is nowhere as functional as Revolt.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Can you explain your opinion of the differences? A friend and I are interested in learning more about Discord alternatives that we can get our less tech-savvy friends to switch to.

[–] cevn 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Revolt offers voice chat and this doesn’t.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

is there any sort of way to have the chat logs be public and searchable? the worst thing about discord being a walled garden is that all the info on it can only be accessed by a discord client.

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[–] recklessengagement 9 points 1 month ago

I've been trying to find a more privacy-friendy alternative to Discord but I keep coming back to the issue of screen sharing. No other platform does it as smoothly.

The best I've found is using Parsec with some virtual audio cables to avoid voice feedback.

[–] Takeshidude 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Spacebar looks great, and is exactly what I want, but it doesn't look close to production ready yet

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Why pick this over ArmCord?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Armcord is a discord client. Spacebar is a discord alternative (server+client)

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[–] keyez 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Just now heard of armcord which I'm going to give a shot on Linux here soon but looks like armcord is just a client, while this is a server as well.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Cool, what are some alternative discord clients to use with it ?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

WebCord supports it.

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