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Alternatives to Discord and Twitch (programming.dev)
submitted 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) by emotional_soup_88@programming.dev to c/linux@lemmy.ml
42 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

TL; DR use Jami

You want something to stream low latency, don't you? Honestly, that means peer to peer, not centralised (I. E streaming to a server which then streams to your friend). OBS will use large buffers (multiple seconds) that are then sent out to the server.

I would suggest using Jami. It's peer to peer chat with peer to peer video and audio calls. It's the simplest solution I've found. Matrix has MatrixRTC (or whatever they call it) but you will need the Element client and will need to activate RTC in the "labs". Not sure if it's in the stable build or the beta.

Signal can also stream peer to peer (webrtc like every other) but it compresses a lot and encrypts on top of it. You could have low latency but you will have visual artefacts and there's no way to tweak the settings.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Honestly, that means peer to peer, not centralised

Peer to peer vs a server does not have significant latency difference. There is one, but not one universal enough that'd make latency the reason to choose the former in most cases.

OBS will use large buffers (multiple seconds) that are then sent out to the server.

It doesn't. Streaming from OBS over WHIP is able to get down to about 300ms of latency, and that's when watching via a server, rather than peer to peer.

The main source of streaming latency (the buffer you mention) happens when using the older HLS standard.

WHIP or WebRTC HTTP Ingestion Protocol (and the other end for clients, WHEP) allows software like Broadcast-box to be just as fast as conferencing screenshares in peer to peer video calls. Because it is the same tech.

Matrix has MatrixRTC (or whatever they call it) but you will need the Element client and will need to activate RTC in the "labs". Not sure if it's in the stable build or the beta.

MatrixRTC voice, video and screenshare is in element, comment and cinny. It does not need to be enabled in labs. Its main problem at the moment is the lack of system audio when sharing the screen.

OBS with Broadcast-box allows you to achieve real-time video sharing with audio, with full control of the video stream audio and quality thorough OBS's recording and encoder settings. And to watch, your friends need no accounts or anything, they just open the broadcast-box link in a browser.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 38 minutes ago (1 children)

I wasn't aware of WHIP, thank you. Last time researched this there was only LL-HLS which was terrible and when I tried Steam for streaming, it was using RTMP with a 6 second latency.

However, while broadcast box looks nice, it seems to require significant setup to stream.

I don't know what OS OP is using but on Linux, you can start a video call with Jami (or anything really), then use qpwgraph to send the game audio to the calling application. 2 steps, start call, send game audio to call.

But it's up to OP what they want to do. It's been a while, but Jami might support sharing system audio now. Their feature list includes "media sharing" in the call features.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 minutes ago

The qpwgraph workaround works in the matrix clients as well, but passing media audio into a WebRTC stream meant for voice is not ideal. Any decent client is likely to heavily filter out background audio (which with a game would be a lot of the ambient soundscape), and the audio would in some cases end up mono.

Broadcast-box is on the simpler side, if self hosting. If not, there is a public free-to-use instance here: https://b.siobud.com/

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 hours ago

You might want to try a service based on XMPP instead of Matrix due to how Matrix caches all the chats its users are in. If you want to go the XMPP route, Movim is the most similar to Discord.

For streaming, I've heard of Owncast as a FOSS alternative. I don't stream nor do I watch them, so please don't consider this more than pointing out what's available

[–] Ooops@feddit.org 10 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 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 13 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Ooops@feddit.org 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 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 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 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 15 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 14 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 12 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 15 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 10 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 14 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 12 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.

[–] juipeltje@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

Luckily i barely use discord, but i have one small usecase for it where it is pretty much irreplacable, which is that i use it to voice chat with a friend when playing games with crossplay support, since he is on ps5, and discord now having ps5 support makes that the go-to app.

[–] procapra@lemmy.ml 3 points 12 hours ago

Whatever your preferred matrix client is. That's the alternative. Element, Nheko, Fluffychat, all decent options.

Is it perfect? Hardly. Is it the best you're going to get short of some cheap discord knockoff? Yes.

[–] FirmDistribution@lemmy.world 27 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

The two most* famous discord alternatives that I know are stoat and fluxer.

I'm the moderator of the fluxer community, you can check it here: !fluxer_app@lemmy.world

EDIT: typos

[–] emotional_soup_88@programming.dev 4 points 20 hours ago

Thanks! I'll check it out! :D

[–] pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I have the same question, but a particular problem I am having is the need to chat via text while streaming instead of audio for accessibility purposes. Discord's game overlay worked okay for this (not great, but usable) on Windows, but doesn't run at all on Linux, and every alternative I look at seems very voice chat focused. Steam does have chat options within the overlay but doesn't seem to have good chat history options.

[–] emotional_soup_88@programming.dev 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I'm using a separate little laptop to chat, in this case, with Signal. It's a little inconvenient, but on the other hand, if you don't have multiple monitors, you are at least free from chat notifications in your gaming screen/window. :)

Yet another though, if you have an Android phone, just plug in a keyboard and use the phone for chat. :D

[–] pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 hours ago

I've considered that a few times, and have done the 'phone chatting while gaming" solution, but it gets pretty unwieldy quickly in my experience, sadly.

[–] jay@mbin.zerojay.com 5 points 15 hours ago

You can also check out stream.place which has integration into bluesky and the atproto.

[–] airikr@lemmy.ml 10 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

I am very happy with having Sharkord installed on my server. Still in alpha stage, but it's very well built in many places. The project is only 3 month old.

Native softwares will never happen, though.

[–] rando@sh.itjust.works 4 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

Second this, me and my friends have been using it since the day it came out (I am the one hosting it) and it checks all the boxes for us.

I was never able to get my group to switch away from Discord but this has finally done it

[–] airikr@lemmy.ml 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Noice :) And yes, it looks like Discord and works like Discord for each update (if not better) and I have searched for such software for many years. Based in EU no less :D

Matrix with Commet would have been a good alternative for me, but I hate how Matrix is built (you are literally forbidden to delete channels you have created).

[–] jay@mbin.zerojay.com 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

you are literally forbidden to delete channels you have created This is not true. Server admins and space admins can delete rooms within them just fine. If you are the last person left in a room and you leave it, it disappears too.

[–] airikr@lemmy.ml 1 points 16 hours ago

I was the admin for the space I created :) Good to know that the whole space will be completely deleted after I left it. They should tell one that. Very confusing otherwise.

[–] emotional_soup_88@programming.dev 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

God I love humanity. Sometimes. Really neat project! :D

[–] airikr@lemmy.ml 2 points 17 hours ago

Haha, yes, you're telling the truth xD

[–] Vittelius@feddit.org 14 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

You could use owncast as a twitch alternative: https://owncast.online/

Some Matrix clients such as comment also support screen sharing (for a more discord like experience). But I haven't used it myself, so I can't speak to its quality or reliability: https://commet.chat/

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 7 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Owncast already mentioned, and while it's good, it doesn't achieve real-time streaming like discord does. It's more of a twitch replacement for streamers with an actual audience thanks to it's ActivityPub support (in that people on stuff like mastodon can "subscribe" to the server).

MatrixRTC is still new and while it's already being used to provide voice channels in clients like element, cinny and commet, as of now none of them can stream gameplay with audio.

For this I'm currently using Broadcast-box. Self-hostable, but the dev also provides a public instance.

It uses WHIP to stream over WebRTC (OBS is compatible) to achieve less than half second latency. More than fast enough to feel like "real-time" if in a voice-chat with friends. And you can push the video quality past what any platform like youtube, twitch or discord will allow.

[–] jay@mbin.zerojay.com 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Owncast seems to do just fine for real-time streaming here...?

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

No?

The fastest I got it down to was about 30 seconds of stream delay. It's a limitation of HLS, which will never be truly fast.

Owncasts own guides state:

If you require real-time, video conferencing style latency you may want to look for a different solution that doesn't use HLS video, as this scaling and distribution model will never get to sub-second levels.

[–] emotional_soup_88@programming.dev 3 points 19 hours ago

Sweet! Thanks for the recommendations!

[–] ISOmorph@feddit.org 3 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (2 children)

Never tried it myself, but doesn't steam have a feature to stream to your friends? Your friend would just need to install the client and create an account. All the other options in this thread are just if you want to serve your streams to a broader audience

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 4 points 18 hours ago

Not even. You can share a stream link.

[–] emotional_soup_88@programming.dev 1 points 18 hours ago

I just recommended it to my friend. Let's see what they say.

[–] Lemmchen@feddit.org 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Steam has game streaming built-in

[–] stringere@sh.itjust.works 2 points 12 hours ago

Yeah, but when I enable the Steam overlay and have my controller connected it takes random screenshots constantly. Which is unfortunate, because I miss getting clips of so many hilarious Pelican landings in Helldivers 2.