I mostly lurk here, and I know we’ve had this discussion come up a number of times since Discord’s age verification changes were announced, but I figured this video offers value for the walkthrough and comparative analysis. Like me, the video authors aren’t seasoned self-hosters, and I’ve still got a lot to learn. Stoat and Fluxer both look appealing to me for my needs, but Stoat seemingly needs self-hosted servers to route through their master server (unless I’m missing something stupid) and I replicated the 404 for Fluxer’s self-hosting documentation seen in the video, so it’s looking like I’m leaning toward a Matrix server of some kind. Hopefully everyone looking for the Discord exit ramp is closer to finding it after this video.
I have tried XMPP, Matrix and now I’ve settled on Mumble.
Me and my fellows mostly just need a voice room or a couple to sit in, and Mumble does that best out of these three, in my opinion.
I recommend giving Mumble a try as it is super easy to set up and use. Users don’t need to even create accounts to join servers.
Mumble is fantastic.
I designed and implemented a very complex voice system for an old guild. Like 100 people, 8 groups of 15, group leader’s private chat, priority speech all that. It worked so well, and never failed.
This was many many years ago, to be fair.
I wish it’s positional audio was more supported.
I’ve got a Mumble server running on a little Linux container in my home lab.
Easy to set up and configure, very stable. Nothing special, it does what it is supposed to do, be a low latency, stable voip system, and it does great.
In order for people to connect to it you have to give them your home IP right? The mumble server’s IP is your home IP?
Yes, like with everything else you self host.
You could also use some paid service like Cloudflare if you want to hide it for some reason.
But generally people are overly protective of their home IP. What’s the danger? DDoS?
People know my physical address but my house hasn’t been burned down yet…
I use Tailscale and share out that server machine’s tailscale IP with just my gaming buddies.
But if you wanna live dangerously, you can port forward from your router to your internal mumble server.
Per their website, it appears to be a free VPN? https://tailscale.com/pricing?plan=personal
Yet they have Mullvad (another VPN) as an optional addon? That’s confusing.
No, Tailscale is an overlay network. In it’s simplest form, it can act as a VPN. But it does much more than that.
Tailscale installs a virtual network device and allocates IP addresses to any device you install it on and sign in with your tailnet. Think of it as a virtual meshed LAN that runs on top of your physical network.
Tailscale becomes your control plane and provides advanced access control options for all your users and devices.
So it’s only a VPN if you purchase the Mullvad addon?
And without the Mullvad option, it’s not really a VPN, but rather a way to get a different IP?
The Mullvad integration allows you to use Mullvad as your VPN for internet browsing while still being on your tailnet.
So normally, running two different VPN services can cause a bunch of problems, if it even works at all. Tailscale’s Mullvad integration fixes that.
Tailscale by itself is an overlay network. It’s literally a second network that your computer is connected to, but instead of it being a physical network with wires, switches, and routers, it’s a virtual network, a network that runs as software.
So imagine your computer right now at home. You plug into your router, and you have a local IP address, something like 192.168.1.20 right? If you run ipconfig on Windows or ip a on Linux, you’ll see your network adaptors listed with what their current IP address is. So if you’re running Windows, you’ll see your physical network adaptor listed with the IP address of 192.168.1.20
When you install Tailscale on that computer and log into your account, then run that command again, you’ll see a new network device listed, and it will have a totally different IP address, like 100.89.113.14
That is your Tailnet IP address, it works just like your “normal” IP address, but instead of it being a physical Ethernet adaptor on your motherboard and plugged into your home router, it is a virtual adaptor (software) running on your computer, connected to the Tailscale network, which has servers all around the world.
When you install Tailscale on a new device, say an old computer that you are using as a Minecraft server. That computer will get a new IP address on your tailnet, say 100.94.65.132
Because both of those machines were added by you to your own Tailnet, they can see and talk to each other by default. Meaning you could run a ping command from your home computer to your Minecraft server’s Tailscale IP, and it will respond.
Because this runs on the internet through Tailscale’s servers, you can do this from anywhere. That’s the “VPN” type functionality you are talking about. No matter where your home computer is, you can still access your Minecraft server because it is on your Tailnet, just as if it were still plugged into your router right next to you.
This is how I access my entire home lab from anywhere in the world. For example, I have a Jellyfin media server (like Plex) that I have a bunch of movies, TV shows, anime on. It’s running Tailscale and is on my Tailnet. I have Tailscale installed on my Android smartphone too.
So if I am staying at a hotel in another state, or visiting my family on the other side of the country, and I want to watch a movie or show that I have on my server all the way back home. I just run the Tailscale app on my phone, then open the Jellyfin app and I see all my home media right there on my phone and can watch it flawlessly. Even though I am at my parent’s house, on a totally different internet connection, 500 miles away from my home.
Afaik you’d have to open a port and port forward for that to work, and you’d have to update every time your ip changes, unless you have a domain linked to it. There’s lots of other configurations, too: VPN/tailscale or equivalent onto your home network, a vps, reverse proxy, etc. I’ve yet to decide how to access from outside my home. Still tinkering locally, but mumble would be fun to try one day.
I just use my (static) IP directly with port forwards on my router.
Sure, I get hundreds of login attempts every day, but that’s just life on the internet. Just secure your stuff and you’re fine.
I second this. My gaming group probably won’t leave discord for the foreseeable future but Mumble is probably where we’d go if we did. IMO all these Discord alternatives are trying to do everything Discord does, when even Discord can’t pull it off sustainably at their scale.
I don’t want federation. I don’t want it to scale to infinite concurrent users. What I want is something simple I can plonk on a crusty old laptop running Proxmox or a Raspberry pi for a few friends.
Even on a crusty old laptop you can easily serve hundreds of users with Mumble
IDK, said laptop is from 2010.
Limiting factor will probably be network - if you hook it up with cable, it should be fine
Mumble was the primary choice for EVE Online groups.
You can literally have thousands of users on the same server.
In EVE, during big fleet fights (like 1000+ people on the same “team”), you can have a hierarchy of fleet commanders/wing commanders/squad leaders where voice travels down the chain of command, but not up.
Also the certificate based security with ACLs is just unmatched. You can set it up exactly how you want.
Also easy to integrate with, which is important for something like EVE.
Mumble is nice, but it hasn’t changed much since the time people explicitly moved away from it to Discord, so why would they go back it it now?
Mumble isn’t requiring you to submit your ID.
Probably nothing has really changed. And I am not claiming it to be a Discord killer, as it really only does the voice rooms well.
But I am recommending it if you and your friends just need a voice room or two (as me and my friends do).