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 think Matrix is the most suitable alternative. For me at least. The Element web and desktop app is almost on level with discord and on matrix.org and other popular instances you get element call too. Plus people already use it.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters Git Popular version control system, primarily for code IP Internet Protocol NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption VPN Virtual Private Network VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (‘Jabber’) for open instant messaging
8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.
[Thread #178 for this comm, first seen 17th Mar 2026, 08:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
What I’m upset about is the absolute wealth of information that will be forever trapped behind Discord. What ever happened to good old fashioned forums? Hell, even a subreddit would at least have been scrapable. If there’s a mass migration away from Discord then all that information just gets lost. Example that Lemmings might care about - CachyOS has a forum, but I’ve seen the vast majority of troubleshooting and user input made on their Discord channel.
Pretty surprised to not see mumble mentioned. It’s mostly a voice chat replacement. But the low latency chat works so damn well and easy to self host.
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.
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?
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.
I use Tailscale
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.
It comes down to Fluxer and Stoat. Or just Stoat if you dislike Fluxer’s AI-assisted development.
One thing is clear, both are currently working great and are the closest thing to Discord’s core features.
Did you run into the same problems I did with self-hosting? And if not, how did you avoid them?
Are you talking about self hosting for fluxer? They explicitly state in their documentation they don’t want people using the current version because they’re doing a rewrite, so you should wait.
Yes, Fluxer’s self hosting documentation 404s, and Stoat seems to still rely on a central server, which isn’t self hosted enough for my needs. It’s cool that both of them are looking good in the near future, but I want something I can start using in the next few months.
When did you last check the self-hosting documentation? I just poked my head into it and there’s a big post talking about why they’d rather people wait on self-hosting.
That said if you liked Fluxer but are not satisfied with it right now (which is completely understandable. It’s in beta, after all, not a finished product), I’d say check back in 2-3 months. I would bet that the self-hosting is ready to go by then, judging by the rate of how other things have been updating.
I believe it was from their GitHub, which is where GamersNexus checked as well. I did subsequently find their blog post. I’m new to self-hosting, and it is taking me longer to learn some crucial pieces of it than I thought, so by the time I’m ready for it, self-hosting for Fluxer may be up again. That said, the only thing I really need Fluxer to do that it looks like Element doesn’t do is screen sharing a game window, and I’m preparing to be able to set up Owncast or something to stream to if that’s the only thing my Discord replacement is bad at, so Fluxer doesn’t have to be my only option.
Welcome to self-hosting! I hope you have fun learning stuff. I’m still kind of on the lower-end of the intermediate scale myself, so I’m hoping they’ll be using dockers and docker-compose once the self-host docs are up.
Right now I do think it has screen share, but it doesn’t allow you to share audio at the same time (known bug). Bummer for me too.
I’m just glad that Discord pushed back their age verification stuff for at least a few months so there’s room for Stoat, Fluxer, etc to get some work done.
Same for me.
The moment I can use Docker, I’m spinning it up with Tailscale and invite those who are ready to swap.
Fingers crossed it turns out as good as we hope!
