It is an more private alternative to Discord. Even tough they do not offer federation, self-hosting servers is possible, but self-hosting Dms is not possible. Matrix does not have separated voice and text chats in one server, aka Discord style. Is it better to use Revolt for now or create our own Federated Discord alternative?

Revolt: https://revolt.chat/

  • Dessalines
    15•3 years ago

    Matrix is working on dedicated voice channels, and there’s also that cinny client that makes it look like discord.

    Pretty much any non-federated chat type system is dead in the water imo, no one should be dedicating developer time to them.

    • Ninmi
      6•3 years ago

      Are they actually working on dedicated voice channels? This issue on it has been locked 1,5 years ago stating they don’t have the resources to do it, indicating it’s a very low priority issue them.

      • Dessalines
        3•3 years ago

        Hrm yeah, seems like its getting pushed back. Either way the entire revolt dev team would have been better off working either on cinny, or this one feature alone.

      • @Stephen304@lemmy.mesh.party
        2•3 years ago

        I remembered and tracked down this comment made by Matthew on HN 4 months ago - I’ve been trying to pay attention to pain points that prevent my friends from trying out federated services. He seems to acknowledge the issue / distinction between discord’s voice channels and what matrix is lacking:

        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28435893

        And further down:

        Thanks all for the responses - the whole “matrix doesn’t have voice channels” thing is much clearer now: it’s not the hard bit (voice/video conferencing!) but just the UX of how it’s hooked up. This we can fix :)

        I’m not sure if there is anything more recent about it though.

        • Ninmi
          2•3 years ago

          Yeah, almost everything really is a UX problem after Spaces fixed the community limitations. Element still desperately needs a UX overhaul.

          E: Matthew’s comments also frustrate me as it’s apparent that no one in the Matrix team has actively used Discord and understand what it does right. Otherwise there’s no way the git issue would have been ignored for 5 years.

          Lack of dedicated voice channels is a massive dealbreaker for almost anyone wanting to migrate over from Discord. We all know all the things Discord does wrong, but some desing decisions like dedicated channels really should just be copied over.

      • Dessalines
        1•3 years ago

        It’s electron, so you’re better off ram-wise running it in a browser anways, just like revolt.

  • @adrianmalacoda@lemmy.ml
    6•3 years ago

    Simply being a libre clone of Discord makes it better than Discord. That being said I’m not very excited about non-federated chat protocols in general.

  • @airikr@lemmy.ml
    4•3 years ago

    I’ve used it for a while now and I really like it! It is in the alpha stage, but it is very stable and neat. Can’t wait until they release the final version.

    The only downside with Revolt is the lack of good Android apps. But, like I’ve said, it is in alpha so I can’t complain that much 😊

  • CHEF-KOCH
    4•3 years ago

    Yop, got my approval, better than pepecord.

    You also can setup bridges to telegram and matrix. It is more stable and reliable compared to other solutions. To answer the question about federation, I would create my own if I had to choose.

  • Emberleaf
    4•3 years ago

    I like it a lot. I honestly don’t give two shits about federation. The UI is attractive and logical and everything does what I want it to do. I wanted a Discord clone that was open source and doesn’t spy on me. Revolt is just that, and I love it.

    • Lionel C-RA
      1•3 years ago

      This is a voice chat app unlike rocketchat and the other you name.

        • Lionel C-RA
          1•3 years ago

          Oh, I always saw it as a voice chat client with text chat functionalities, never thought it was the other way around.

          Good to know.

  • krolden
    2•3 years ago

    Why does everything have to look like discord?

    • @morrowind@lemmy.ml
      5•3 years ago

      Cause the UI and UX is so damn good. That’s part of why they got so popular, people really liked their interface, the way they had voice “channels” you could just join instead of fiddling with calls etc.

  • Lionel C-RA
    2•3 years ago

    It seems OK and the interface looks slick but I tried a few months ago and could not make it work following the documentation, I thought I would wait a little bit before trying again.

    I think I read somewhere they would think about federation in a second time. That doesn’t bother me so much as I would probably use it like mumble with a small group of friends. That being said I do think federation would be a great feature to have, specially for the software adoption.

  • Geotechland
    2•3 years ago

    I’ve been thinking about this recently too and Revolt does look nice, and would be better than discord, but I would like to see matrix clients/clones that also cater more to discord users.

    It’s kind of like the signal app. It’s the best one that is easy to use for now.

    • @the_tech_beast@lemmy.ml
      0•3 years ago

      I would like to see matrix clients/clones that also cater more to discord users.

      So you want to see a client that works with both discord and matrix? Is that what you mean by that? Discord seems to not like third party clients.

      What about bridging a discord room to matrix?

  • @Whom@lemmy.ml
    0•3 years ago

    I like it a lot. While in principle Matrix may have some important benefits, in practice it’s a dogshit experience and I have a hard time ever seeing it getting mass adoption even with the many refinements that have been coming down the line.

    The way discord groups and manages channels is essential for the kind of community building that it allows, and Revolt copies it directly. Try to mimic that on Matrix or something similar and you’ll end up with a loosely connected mess.