- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Fluxer is an open-source, independent instant messaging and VoIP platform. Built for friends, groups, and communities.
https://github.com/fluxerapp/fluxer
https://blog.fluxer.app/how-i-built-fluxer-a-discord-like-chat-app/
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Seems worth keeping an eye on but it doesn’t look mature enough to use for now.
I’m avoiding stoat/revolt given the controversy. fluxer seems pretty good as far as centralized alternatives go.
Of all the discord clones, this one does look promising I must admit, especially since the dev has mentioned they’d be open to incorporating federation and some encryption abilities down the road. The GPL license is a good mark, and the dev seems pretty chill. Downside is that’s it’s still very rough and in more of a visually polished alpha state. The dev mentioned they’re about to release a major refactor of the codebase, which they hope will fix the sluggishness the server is experiencing after an influx of new users from the Discord dumpster fire.
Personally, I’d still suggest Movim over Fluxer at the moment.
Movim already has a proven scalable back-end, it’s already federated, already provides good encryption, has 90% feature parity with Discord such as Chats, group video calls, screen-sharing with audio (requires chromium browser to share audio for now), its made in the EU, and it’s ready right now, not some time in the future (if Discord users fleeing discord try Fluxer, they’d be likely to bail on it due to the current bugs and just go back to discord). The Movim developer is also currently working on adding in discord-like channels and rooms.
(Movim also doesn’t require an email to create an account, and runs right in your browser, so I’d highly recommend quickly giving it a shot with a friend to see if it can meet your needs! :D)
But that’s just my 2 cents. Fluxer is one to keep an eye on for the future, though.
I don’t hate movim, but I think it’s too janky to replace discord.
Fair enough. It definitely isn’t quite as smooth as Discord. I’m hoping that with more funding and users, Movim could get that last bit of polish it needs, but if Fluxer is able to do it first, then fair play honestly.
We will watch this with great interest.
Is the communications encrypted?
It is not, but I don’t think e2ee is really needed in most contexts.
On one-on-one chats, or closely knit group chats, it does make sense, but for large groups it tends to break things. Any large room on matrix will have encryption disabled.
In the context of discord alternatives, discord doesn’t do encryption in the first place anyway, so it’s not like it would be missed.
I agree that apart from https to and from something like a forum/public chat room there is no point in encrypting that space, since it’s public. However, one on one chats and VoIP calls I think is a different thing. As long as it is made clear that private DMs and calls aren’t encrypted, preferably stated along with all features on the webpage, then it becomes a conscious choice for the consumer/user.
Self-hosted deployments won’t include any traces of Plutonium, and nothing is paywalled. You can still configure your own tiers and limits in the admin panel.
Thanks for bearing with me. Development on Fluxer is about to get much easier, and the project will be made sustainable through community contributions and bounties for development work. Stay tuned – there’s not much left now.
I thought I could take it a bit easier while shipping this stabilising update, but Discord’s recent announcement has changed things.
As soon as the refactor is live, I’ll interact more actively and push updates to this repository more frequently. The remaining parts of the refactor are currently being worked on and are being tested by a small group of testers before I’m comfortable pushing everything publicly. After that, all work will happen openly in public.
Won’t include any traces of Plutonium,
Whoa whoa, I have to power it with nuclear energy? I dont have a degree for that! /s
In all seriousness, this reads as good right?
Ever since Discord made their stupid announcement there’s been a flood of replacement messaging programs that made me think of the famous xkcd “industry standards” strip.
Wasn’t Discord itself already part of that, I mean there’s
- general “jabber” protocol stuff
- Google chat/talk
- Discord
- FB messenger
- Signal
- Steam chat/voice
- Teams/Skype/Whatever
- Line
- Kaokao (Korea)
- WhatsApp *WeChat (China)
- etc etc
And that all replaced the oldies like MSN and ICQ etc
These are all mainstream, I meant all the alt/fedi ones, like Stoat, Pumble, Zulip, etc. etc.
Message limits are a bit frustrating, and I need to more about privacy but this looks promising
Wait until an unaffiliated third party hosts it. If only the developers actually run a server, then its no better tgan discord. Or just register on literally any other server that runs something conparable for free without limitations.
How does one go about self hosting something like this, I’ve never done it before, but im not too keen on giving discord my ID or a face scan (definitely not both)
Fluxer is still very much in alpha/beta, and documentation for self-hosting is yet to be written.
If you’d like to host something more mature that offers 90% of the functionality of Discord, I’d recommend hosting an XMPP server, which would enable you to also host a Movim instance on top of it. You can ask for help as a beginner in !selfhosted@lemmy.world to get started :)
You could also use Movim without hosting it yourself, since it’s already federated like Lemmy/Piefed are.
Sadly, the answer can range from super technical to super boiled down version. Depending on individual’s knowledge, money reserves, and the will to set things up the proper way.
Here’s the boiled down version: You will need a server with a public IP address, preferably a hostname. The server has have SSH access. Then it is whichever way is most convenient - direct install, docker, etc.
I, for example, have a Scaleway + Cloudflare DNS for my server and run everything in Docker behind Traefik reverse proxy that automatically serves certificates.
The price is about 15€ for the server per month, DNS is free, domain is under 20€ a year - although way cheaper ones exist.
This was literally started on January 1st this year on github.
This has to be mostly vibe-coded right? Or is it just a UI right now and not functional.
The second link in the body of OP is the dev explaining that he’d been working on it in his spare time for 5 years before releasing it as a public beta on Github.
He does mention using AI in a limited capacity.
Fluxer was largely built before LLMs became a normal part of day-to-day development. I do use them now, but in a limited way: as a rubber duck and for mechanical implementation work when I already have a detailed spec. I treat the code it outputs like I would any external contribution.
No LLM designed the system, wrote the specs, or made architectural decisions. That was all me. I only use LLMs when I already know the platform well enough to review the result properly.
Ultimately, you’ll have to take my word for it that I’m trying to handle this responsibly. Fluxer is a large, complicated codebase because the project itself is large and complicated. LLMs still aren’t capable of autonomously producing anything like what Fluxer is today.
If it were that easy to create something this polished on a whim using only LLMs, we’d already be swimming in credible Discord alternatives.
In short, for Fluxer: PRs should be reviewable, understandable, and test-backed. Submitting generated code you cannot explain, or using an LLM to bypass review standards, isn’t acceptable. At the same time, responsible use of LLMs as a tool is fine, and contributors should not be harassed for using them.
Moreover, the OSS release began from a clean slate, so the public commit count doesn’t reflect the full private iteration timeline, how long it has been deployed in production, or how extensively it has been tested. Going forward, what matters is that contributions will be reviewed, and tests will be required where appropriate. I also don’t condone low-effort, unreviewed AI slop.
I published the project with a squashed history because the early work happened privately, and I didn’t want to make 3,000+ messy commits part of the public record. I’m proud of where things are now, and the codebase has improved a lot over the 3+ years it was developed in private. Squashing commits during a closed source to open source transition is common practice, and it doesn’t imply the project was vibe-coded.
This is my work, and it’s hard-earned. If something seems too good to be true, it’s because I’ve put real effort into making it good.
I get that in the age of LLMs, people are more suspicious and may assume bad intent behind every project. But some projects come from true passion and domain understanding. That’s the case for Fluxer.
I could’ve built and maintained this platform without using LLMs for the mechanical parts of the work. It just would’ve taken about three times as long. At that pace, I’d need a full-time job to make a living, and then I wouldn’t have time for Fluxer anyway. This is the world we live in, and sometimes compromises are unavoidable.
Starting with no money, the realistic options were to raise VC funding (since most people won’t back a project like this until it’s already close to what they expect), or to use LLMs in a limited, controlled way to speed up the mechanical tasks. I chose the latter so the project could stay independent.
If you feel conflicted about this, know that I do too. I’m happier writing code by hand. Going forward, LLMs don’t need to be quite as involved. Now that I’ve released publicly, I don’t necessarily need to work on this alone, and I’ve prepared the codebase to make it attractive to people who want to self-host the software.
Oh, I was just going through the github, my fault for not being thorough.
Seems like he is using it well and not just having it code the project for him. If this can beat matrix in voice channels + screen sharing/video sharing then that would be awesome.
My group of friends uses discord since I am very far away from them and we need the screen sharing and webcam video feed for D&D.
It’s a promising project for sure, though it will have to prove that it can scale up without bogging down.
As an alternative, there’s also Movim, which uses a more mature back-end. If you’d like, you could try that out with a friend to see if it can handle your needs. It offers both group video calls and screen-sharing (must use a chromium based browser to screen-share with audio for now), and it’s already federated and offers optional encryption based on Signal’s style of encryption.
Do you know if there are specific sub-forums on Movim with active communities? My very first impression- it looks like there are plenty of articles available but not many people discussing them.
Like Lemmy a few years ago, there is not yet a large community on Movim. I’m hoping that an exodus of Discord users who give Movim a try will bring with it more activity, just as the reddit API exodus did with Lemmy a couple years back. The first adopters may need to rely on just using it to communicate with friends for a bit as they either wait for others to build communities, or build some themselves, which is what made Lemmy as healthy and vibrant as it is today :)
According to the blog:
What I’m about to introduce is a brand new OSS community chat app I’ve worked on solo, on and off, for the past 5 years. I believe it’s one of the closest public attempts at feature parity with platforms like Discord or Slack to date.
Without checking it, it’s likely that the first commit had already years of work.
I love to see some Gleam in this project, wonderful language.
Does it have voice channels ?
For matrix Not in the Discord sense. It’s more like Skype or Signal. You start a call and people can join.
But yes Fluxer does. And so does Stoat but there servers are bombarded at the moment
Wait, Fluxer and Stoat have Voice channels ? Am I getting this right?
deleted by creator
Yes both Apps have active voice channels. Just join the voice channel, click in unmute your mic and start yapping !
Which one is easier to self host? Has anyone tried using it on an offline LAN?
Fluxer is less than a week old. So I can’t speak for that. But I’ve heard a few people struggle with Stoat. But the devs and the community are always online to help
The website says VoIP, so I’m assuming so
It might be voice calls.
