Been trying to figure out a user friendly alternative that I can get my less technical friends to transition to. We all use Signal already for messaging but it just doesn’t fulfill our screenshare needs.
Most important feature it needs is the ability to screenshare with system audio, such as for streaming games or watching videos.
I’d ideally also like it to be E2EE just for the sake of privacy and security.
From what I’ve read and looked into it seems the closest thing that meets my needs would be Teamspeak 6 as you can host it yourself, and with the new update it now allows screenshare with audio (either as P2P or via server).
As far as I can tell chat messages don’t persist by default but it can be enabled (and this would be a feature my friends would really want too).
I currently have a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ but I’m aware it’s a bit old and is ARM so I’m thinking of buying a Pi 5.
Do you think I’m on the right track here or are there any other options this community would recommend?
I currently have a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ but I’m aware it’s a bit old and is ARM so I’m thinking of buying a Pi 5.
The Pi 5 lacks a H264 hardware encoder/decoder, making it unsuitable for most streaming/transcoding purposes.
I’ve streamed games to friends over Signal. Why won’t that work for you?
I’ve been trying to get zulip working.
Sounds like it addresses your requirements.
Seems to be a real bitch to self host - I’ve been doing this a while but the compose yaml is pretty arcane with hundreds of environment variables.
I didn’t “give up” exactly but it’s been on the back burner for a month or so now.
Galéne, but it’s really only for video/voice chat. But that it does great, low resource use, and you can even have multiple media streams from the same machine without issue.
I use Matrix with the Jitsi plugin. I know everyone talks shit about Matrix, it’s been flawless for me.
IDK about watching videos, that’s a lot to ask of a screensharing app.
Wait there’s a jitsi plugin?
it’s been flawless for me
What kind of deal-with-the-devil black magic fuckery have you done to be able to write that? I’m happy if Matrix actually sends damn pictures and gave up completely on verifying my sessions.
Meanwhile I’m just out here banging my head against a wall for hours having tried to make it work on Unraid and ended up not succeeding…
Perhaps Spacebar is a thing (the client of choice would be Fermi I think). Didn’t try it myself yet though, I do not know about how well its security protocol works. I’d assume it uses just a standard TURNS server for audio and video though.
Then of course there’s Matrix with Jitsi plugin, which will give you persistent headaches and a new appreciation of touching grass. It’s a mess, but hypothetically offers E2EE (if it works).
Discord-compatible (Use all your custom clients/bots with minimal changes)
I was excited at first, because I thought I could still chat with friends who won’t leave Discord.
This isn’t necessarily an answer, but what ever happened to Revolt?
They renamed to Stoat https://stt.gg/
I wonder how they got that name, maybe just me but it brings to mind a lot of things but none of them are a chat client.
I think it mostly reminds me of voat, anyone remember that horrible place?
Stoat is a cute little animal, and they say they chose it because it is quick and clever. Kind of like how “Lemmy” is named after an animal that shares similar properties
I like things being named after cute animals
I think for about 2 weeks Voat had potential. Then the Nazis moved in and it was doomed.
Element on Matrix is the only one I’m aware of - but it’s not the easiest to set up. I would try creating an account on matrix.org’s server just temporarily to try it out and see if it fits what you’re looking for. I like the decentralized nature of it, but the support is very piecemeal, and onboarding people essentially needs a class.
Ugh, I just got matrix with video working and it took way too long.
Tried NextCloud with Talk module?
It ok, but you will need an external signaling server to make it work over NAT. Also it’s only good for a few in video chat as the load peer to peer.
To my knowledge there is no such thing available however you have just enlightened me about TS6’s featureset. It sounds like it is the exact solution you are asking for (and one I’m going to immediately try out myself.)
Yeah I figured that might be the case. It was in the works for a while available on their community servers, but the server beta just came out in October, I’m going try it out myself this weekend too
Encrypted Matrix or mattermost server with jitsi?
https://movim.eu/ can do that AFAIK, but for now the A/V calls don’t go through an SFU distribution server (coming soonish), so it will not scale to many participants. But if you want to only stream to a few people (like max. 5 or so, depends a bit on your and their internet speed) it should work.
