this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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Alternatives to Discord and Twitch (programming.dev)
submitted 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) by emotional_soup_88@programming.dev to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Given the recent controversies surrounding Discord and the fact that the end user is a product of Twitch, I wonder if there is any "bare bone" solution to stream my gaming session to a friend who's on Windows. I'd rather that they didn't have to do anything except clicking on a link or perhaps installing a piece of software but with no need to do any configuration. From their perspective, it should "just work.

On my side
Should I set up a webserver into which I feed an OBS stream? Or can perhaps ffmpeg work as a server on it's own? I'm on Arch Linux, playing games on Steam, within dwm within X11.

On my friend's side
No idea how a windows user is supposed to receive such a video feed.

Edit: text and voice chat, we're considering Signal for.

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[–] Ooops@feddit.org 11 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (3 children)

Discord alternatives are complicated, because Discord is conceptual bullshit. It started as voice communication, yet became popular for the text communication.

So you won't find a good replacement (unless something new created in particular to mimic discord), because the things it now provides are better handled by seperate applications.

PS: ~~OBS should already work on it's own, without a dedicated webserver on your side. Basically every media program (also browser) should be able to handle streams~~

OBS' WHIP (WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion) support should allow direct connection to web browsers.

(I'll will take a look at it when I'm home)

[–] Landless2029@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Dont forget people using discord as a fking replacement for a repo...

[–] Ooops@feddit.org 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

wtf?

Pleass tell me you are just talking about discord channels instead of proper issue trackers and not something even more stupid...

[–] Landless2029@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Both.

People have locked channels with info instead of a readme in a repo.

And

Channels for opening issues with topics for bug tracking.

For example check nexus mods authors...

[–] emotional_soup_88@programming.dev 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks! I just installed OBS - also trying out a few variants from the AUR - but it gave an error saying "couldn't load frontend-tools plugin", didn't recognize/pick up the Steam and/or the game's window, even though I tried the game in various screen modes, and WHIP wasn't in the streaming servers/sources selection section. I did some limited troubleshooting, but gave up, because my friend says they have Steam too. We'll try out Steam's "native" broadcasting function later tonight and see if we're satisfied with that + chat/voice chat through Signal.

Thanks for your time and input! :)

[–] Ooops@feddit.org 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Oh, I assumed you already had setup OBS...

And WHIP is probably unneccessarily complicated anyway.

I was able to stream the output of my V4L2loopback-device (the virtual camera created with OBS' output) to a browser accessing localhost: with Motion without any setup other than creating a single-line config file defining the port...

[–] emotional_soup_88@programming.dev 1 points 14 hours ago

Yeah, sorry, I was unclear on several parts in the post. Thanks anyways! If Steam's native broadcasting turns out to such, I'll try something else.

[–] zealouscurmedgeon@lemmy.ml 2 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

There's quite a few Discord alternatives. IMO Stoat and especially Fluxer are pretty discord-like. Fluxer is pretty new and still working out kinks. They support (Stoat) or will support (Fluxer) self-hosting and Fluxer will implement (limited) E2EE. I have heard of other alternatives like Root, TeamSpeak, Mumble but cannot speak to them.

[–] Hexarei@beehaw.org 3 points 12 hours ago

The main trouble with Stoat and Fluxer from what I've seen is that they're both trying too hard to be Discord, while neither of them are quite hitting the mark. They'll be interesting to follow in the future

[–] Ooops@feddit.org 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Teamspeak and Mumble (which I prefer because it's free and open-source... also already vastly superior sound quality years ago when Teamspeak was stil the common option most peope used) are indeed "separate applications" doing only one of the jobs... voice communication in this case.

[–] stringere@sh.itjust.works 3 points 14 hours ago

Boggles my mind that teamspeak has always sounded better than discord, and yet dicksword swallowed TS's market. Something teamspeak handled (haven’t used in ages, cannot say if it still does) was people speaking at the same time.