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.
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
Thanks! I’ll check it out! :D
Both of these look great, I’m noting them for the next time my friends get frustrated enough with Discord to consider moving
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.
God I love humanity. Sometimes. Really neat project! :D
Haha, yes, you’re telling the truth xD
Electron is a relatively recent thing. What did Devs do in the past?
Native software, usually only for Windows. And probably no webapp or a very limited one.
Yes, but if you ask me, native softwares is not webapps in any kind and form.
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.
Bare bone streaming tools like Sunshine work cross platform if your friend runs Moonlight on Windows. This setup beats Discord or Twitch for low latency gaming sessions with friends. Have you tried Sunshine and Moonlight yet?
This looks like a neat and simple enough setup! Thank! :)
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.
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.
