FOSS voice chat application Mumble has finally put out the massive 1.3 overhaul

Discord took the spotlight, I really miss using Mumble.

Mumble "just" does what it's meant for: voice chat. And that is does brilliantly.
Discord is more like a bit of everything, voice chat, chatting (like irc with channels), video chat, streaming (lately), even game distribution...
I still prefer Mumble over Discord, as I can host it myself, so I have full control over it and nothing is monitored. Also with Mumble I can do a fancy audio setup, where I can filter channels for streaming, when people don't want to be audible on stream. That's just not possible with Discord (yet).
Again it's more like, the right tool for the right task. And Mumble does an awesome job for voice chatting.

I still use Teamspeak, but updating it is a bit of a pain, because I have to update the little server app on my "server" laptop first - if the clients update early, then it breaks, which isn't ideal.

I tried Mumble years ago, but switched to Teamspeak because the app did a better job with low-quality mics, including echo reduction and noise reduction.

Discord seems to have grabbed the market though.

Discord is Spyware trash. The company that Discord used to be called was sued for privacy violations. They only got big by bribing Youtubers.

Installing Discord is like installing Windows 10.

Quoting: commodore256Discord is Spyware trash. The company that Discord used to be called was sued for privacy violations. They only got big by bribing Youtubers.

Installing Discord is like installing Windows 10.

Discord effectively stole all of my gaming buddies away from me. We had a good thing going with Mumble too.

I fucking hate Discord.


Literal spyware and all the brainless gamers just gobble it right up.

Quoting: GustyGhostDiscord effectively stole all of my gaming buddies away from me. We had a good thing going with Mumble too.

I fucking hate Discord.


Literal spyware and all the brainless gamers just gobble it right up.

Yeah, every time somebody sets up a mumble server they're like "can you all join my Discord Server?". I'd be like "It's not 'your' Discord Server because it's hosted on a Computer that's not yours. I know the exact specs of My Mumble Server and the street address of where the server is located because it's in my basement."


The internet culture has devolved outside of self-reliance. You see it in social media, I'm thinking of closing my Facebook and Twitter and going back to forums.

Why the Discord hate here? Every time someone shouts "spyware" about this app, I do another little search on the internet and yet every time, I seem to end up on the usual fairly paranoid forum and reddit posts that simply put Discord in the same basket as Steam and Facebook. Sites like this don't help sell the story. Yes, they track stuff, like the messages you type? That's what the service is! Yes, they hold your email address. That's how you log in to the service.

So most of the hate seems to revolve around the "process logger" which is a feature of the thick client so that Discord can put a "scaine is playing Mothergunship" tag under my username when I start playing. It's opt-in too.

Bottom line, all the cries about "Discord is spyware" seem to come from a Stallman-like hatred for any and all proprietary programs. If that fits your ideals, great. But since I already use Spotify, Netflix, Prime, Steam, Twitter and Google products, it's pretty clear it doesn't fit mine.

Now maybe I'm just a "brainless gamer, gobbling it all up". But I don't think that "installing Discord is like installing Windows 10".

Seriously, I think GOL needs a :rollseyes: smiley. The over-reaction is real.

I played around with Mumble/Murmur/Riot (M/M/R)a couple few years back and got a Steam friend to test it out with me. I forget the details, but he was like "It's great, but Discord's easier." And that's why I think Discord's the King of game VOIP nowadays, it's almost impossibly easy to get on and talking with friends.

Still, because it is so heavy with stuff I don't need, I only use Discord when the Steam VOIP is going through one of its "your breaking up" phases. I just want to be able to talk to my friends easily when I game, maybe I can interest the core group of friends in M/M/R. It really was better.


Last edited by Nanobang on 9 September 2019 at 12:48 pm UTC

Quoting: scaineWhy the Discord hate here? Every time someone shouts "spyware" about this app, I do another little search on the internet and yet every time, I seem to end up on the usual fairly paranoid forum and reddit posts that simply put Discord in the same basket as Steam and Facebook.

It is the same as managing your own mail server. It's a lot of work to do but your data is yours. Of course you can use Gmail instead. You have to decide for yourself. But there are already good reasons why people want to control their means of communication themselves.

My friends and I use Mumble. The main reason is because TeamSpeak doesn't have audio attenuation for Linux clients. Discord is overkill and a waste of screen space for what I want. If I were to use Discord, I would want E2EE or at least full server control and a mini UI. Plus, I'd really prefer it to be open source. Yeah, I don't picture migrating to Discord anytime soon. The times I've used Discord or Slack were when I was in big guilds that required it. I don't use them anymore since I don't play those games right now.

Quoting: scaineWhy the Discord hate here?.

Lots of reasons

http://classactionlawsuitsinthenews.com/class-action-lawsuit-complaints/openfeint-green-international-privacy-class-action-lawsuit-complaint/

Who is OpenFeint?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenFeint#Founder_after_OpenFeint

I don't trust Discord/ Hammer & Chisel

The hate isn't without merit. It's shit like this is the straw that broke the hammer's back for me. I've been burned by non-free Software too many times.

I trusted Windows, I trusted Facebook, I trussed Twitter, I trusted Discord. I will no longer trust anything proprietary or centralized garbage ever again. How do I know my own Bios isn't spying on me? Oh wait, it probably is thanks to IME and if I was using AMD, it would be the PSP.

I've been burned so many times, this doesn't surprise me.

its not just about the desktop client. i dont use discord for the same reasons i dont use facebook or any social network. discord is worse because to get a 'better experience' you have to install their program on your computer (and phone?). im cautious enough using steam already. dont need another social network company to worry about. i am also bothered by 'join my discord server'. yo its not a server and it aint yours. people dont say 'join our irc server at #gamingonlinux'.

whenever i'm playing a game someone inevitably asks me to talk to them through discord. my answer is: i use mumble. we can use that. if not, then lets just use the in game voice chat which we both are already guaranteed to have. plus its built in so nothing to do other than enable it. yet no one wants to do this. why the insistence on using discord?

Quoting: 0aTT

Quoting: scaineWhy the Discord hate here?

It is the same as managing your own mail server. It's a lot of work to do but your data is yours.

i disagree that it's a lot of work, and barely even comparable to email server maintenance. this release of mumble is the first major release in 10 years. that means you couldve had 1.2 running for 10 years and only applied a patch every 3-4 months. you basically install it, configure it (defaults are pretty good), and forget about it. your OS maintenance would be more work than mumble maintenance.

On one hand, I very much understand the misgivings many of 'us' have about services like Discord (facebook, twitter, google, etc). I really would like to control my own content, files, and programs. I left Facebook over a decade ago. I have never joined Twitter. I run my own Mastodon server.

That said... hosting your own stuff is a massive job in and of itself! The cost for all of the storage, networking, and power consumption can grow very quickly! My single Mastodon server costs me $10 a month to host because I don't feel I can host it right from my apartment's network (which I can't upgrade / rewire, obviously). I use Amazon as a place to store the media files for my server and, while I'm running in the free tier, nearly every month I get a warning that I'm close to hitting the cap. All of this, and I'm barely even active on my Mastodon server!

And all of the above is just ONE service!
I'd love to be Sys Admin Master God Uber 1337, but I just don't have the time and resources to host everything (AND keep it all patched perfectly), and I'd venture to say the vast majority of us are in a similar boat.

Finally, even if you hosted ALL your own stuff... who are you going to talk to? Perhaps I'm just the most unlucky son-of-a-bish but none of my friend or family care about security or privacy concerns! Nobody I talk with could really care less about Facebook or Twitter or Google being able to see all of their information! The convenience trumps all of those concerns for them! I could argue the merits of decentralized, open source services until I'm blue in the face, but I can't give a good argument against, "but all of my friends are already on <service here>. They're not going to move, so why should I?"... and, I suppose, I'm stuck asking that same question.

TL;DR Would love to be exclusively decentralized and open services or host my own... but I like to stay social with my friends, and they use Discord, not Mumble, sadly.

Quoting: ObsidianBlkTL;DR Would love to be exclusively decentralized and open services or host my own... but I like to stay social with my friends, and they use Discord, not Mumble, sadly.

This is why this issue persists, apathy. Tell your friends Discord is for Boomers that install spyware.

For ease of use, lack of need to self host (kind of) and really good voice quality I highly recommend Riot (riot dot im).
The client is relatively easy to use and the whole system (Riot frontend, Matrix backend, and Jitsi for voice/video) is open source.

The way Matrix works is decentralised, so each computer in a room keeps a log of the chats and updates the others when they come online. As such you're technically self-hosting, but without the hassle/cost that entails (you can also actually self host if you want).

The only downside I've found is it's not clear when someone is online (no indicator next to their name in the room list), though it's entirely possible that I'm missing it.

Mumble really isn't comparable to email hosting, unless you want it to be. Back when a friend and I had our own private Minecraft server (which was properly hosted), I just used to run it here on my PC and send him my IP address over Minecraft's text chat. I could have used a dynamic DNS service I suppose, but that would have been more work. :P

It worked like a charm. The audio quality was better than anything else, even turned down pretty low, and it never dropped out.

Steam chat's easier, but it isn't reliable. We've actually resorted to Mumble again a couple of times when Steam's been playing silly buggers.

I've been meaning to look into Riot - it sounds really interesting - but I don't do much voice chat these days (never did, in fact - which was the main reason for that ad-hoc Mumble setup - but now less than ever).

Quoting: commodore256Discord is Spyware trash. The company that Discord used to be called was sued for privacy violations. They only got big by bribing Youtubers.

Installing Discord is like installing Windows 10.

This is one aspect i was questioning about Discord, not starting to use it. Now it seems i will stay away from it all in all. It's huge now but it's not better than Skype for instance

Could Riot one day replace Discord in the gaming community? Or maybe not exactly * replace * but be a truly viable, free as in freedom alternative?

Could a Discord Rich Presence type of thing be implemented on Lutris for Riot [Matrix}?

Quoting: commodore256

Quoting: ObsidianBlkTL;DR Would love to be exclusively decentralized and open services or host my own... but I like to stay social with my friends, and they use Discord, not Mumble, sadly.

This is why this issue persists, apathy. Tell your friends Discord is for Boomers that install spyware.

It has nothing to do with apathy, it has to do with community. If you can't convince your family and/or friends to use these alternate services (and calling them stupid is FAR from effective in doing so), what's the point? Who wants to be in an empty forum or a dead chatroom? People aren't (totally) stupid, but most have neither the skill set, nor time to manage hosting all of their own services, and, for those of us that might, !great!, but your friends are still going to congregate where all of their other friends are, whether that be Discord, Facebook, Twitter, etc, and you're left being a lonely, smug, know-it-all screaming into the wind.

(BTW, when I say 'you' I'm not referring specifically to you)

In the end, host what your friends are willing to switch to or what you personally just want to use, and, for those other services, block what you can and be aware of what content you put up.

Quoting: scaineWhy the Discord hate here? Every time someone shouts "spyware" about this app, I do another little search on the internet and yet every time, I seem to end up on the usual fairly paranoid forum and reddit posts that simply put Discord in the same basket as Steam and Facebook. Sites like this don't help sell the story. Yes, they track stuff, like the messages you type? That's what the service is! Yes, they hold your email address. That's how you log in to the service.

So most of the hate seems to revolve around the "process logger" which is a feature of the thick client so that Discord can put a "scaine is playing Mothergunship" tag under my username when I start playing. It's opt-in too.

Bottom line, all the cries about "Discord is spyware" seem to come from a Stallman-like hatred for any and all proprietary programs. If that fits your ideals, great. But since I already use Spotify, Netflix, Prime, Steam, Twitter and Google products, it's pretty clear it doesn't fit mine.

Now maybe I'm just a "brainless gamer, gobbling it all up". But I don't think that "installing Discord is like installing Windows 10".

Seriously, I think GOL needs a :rollseyes: smiley. The over-reaction is real.

And even then, on Linux you can install the flatpak version and it prevents it from being able to read what processes are currently active.

However, it's still true that the company behind Discord has a shady past and that the client is very bloated and vulnerable like all Electron apps.


Last edited by Aeder on 9 September 2019 at 5:08 pm UTC

Quoting: ObsidianBlkIt has nothing to do with apathy, it has to do with community.

It does, it's not your apathy, it's the community's apathy. People used things on the Internet before Facebook, Twitter and Discord. Boomers gonna boom.

I'm using Facebook and twitter less and less and I feel like my mind is getting more and more clear. Those are Junk Platforms just like how Candy is Junkfood. Not only is it not good for you, it's addictive and the cravings hurt less and less the more you control yourself. The internet is supposed to be Forums, Jabber and Mumble. Not Facebook, Twitter and Discord. "Web 3.0" is a cancer.


Last edited by commodore256 on 9 September 2019 at 5:48 pm UTC