Keep P2P as the default for small rooms — that’s most servers most of the time and the no-extra-infra story is genuinely valuable for self-hosters.
[I] went mediasoup, built into Haven, after all. The two things that pushed my plan above toward LiveKit are gone now. It runs on one port instead of a whole range, and it downloads a ready-made build instead of compiling anything.
While the code is a slop hodgepodge, Haven is currently the only Discord clone I have found that makes it easy to selfhost; no extra open port except 443 80, single docker container, no extra database.
Website: https://haven-app.com/
My wife and I use it for our private discussions. We have a high functioning disabled adult daughter which can not live on her own. Anyway, as her caregivers, it gives us a platform to privately discuss different areas which are necessary, but at the same time triggering to her. (For example, she’s very afraid and severely anxious about fire so if we talk about a fire in a business or in the news, it’s there).
Overall, It’s worked perfectly and no issues!
I could rant about the slop but it’s pointless because the developers of this didn’t even understand why Discord alternatives never work out.
- Bridging Discord without bots on Discord’s side is against Discord ToS, so don’t rely on that.
- P2P is a great idea except it scares the hoes so you’ve cut 80% of your market off right there.
- No federation so realistically everyone is gonna have to create and manage like 10 separate accounts for each of their friend groups, which even the most hardcore anti-Discord folks aren’t going to bother with.
Also this is a promo post, however sneaky you try to make it. Tag appropriately.
Discord isn’t federated either and their tenancy is pretty strict (they even call it “servers” even though there is no actual server you create).
In that regard Haven follows that more strictly: your “server” is an actual independent instance you host yourself. You can still link other servers to have basically the same UX as Discord where you can switch between servers from the sidebar.
I did tag it?
Edit: I’ve now added it to the title too, I guess some clients don’t support piefed’s tags
Turns out the piefed tags don’t federate with lemmy, if you want proof I wasn’t acting in bad faith look at the post from my server.
https://piefed.nl/c/selfhosted@lemmy.world/p/226603/haven-discord-alternative-discussion-on-p2p-mediasoup-livekit
You make a point on federation but Haven does allow you to login using sso from your own server.
I guess it’s also about what you need, for a small server for a 3-12 friends it works fine where alternatives are total overkill to selfhost.
Once i find a different discord clone thats this easy to selfhost I’ll switch to it immediately. Before commenting I’d urge you to try selfhosting the other clones its a minefield of ports which scares me off tbh
I’d urge you to try selfhosting the other clones
Lady I got a decade of experience trying to get off Discord. I know.
Matrix isn’t that hard if you can read, though, and it has actual users, and you get to control your account. It has other problems that make it non-viable.
Wtf is a mindfield
For lifekit to work it needs direct https access, if you’re running caddy server that means connecting the tls certs to livekit somehow then opening up a hole range of ports.
I believe they are pointing out that its “minefield” not “mindfield”.
Thanks, and fixed my spelling mistake
Yeah but I want to know what a mindfield is
Here is the docker-compose file I’m using (I reverse proxy http://localhost:3000/ on the host):
services: haven: container_name: haven image: ghcr.io/ancsemi/haven:latest ports: - 127.0.0.1:3000:3000 volumes: - ./data:/data environment: - PORT=3000 - FORCE_HTTP=true restart: unless-stoppedhttps://github.com/shadowflee3/fluxer-selfhost
As comparison fluxer which I was much more interested in (polyproto federation, better UX mobile and web, hype) needs 4 containers (ex. proxy & certbot) needs 80 443 7700 7880 7881 3478 50000-50100 ports & two configuration files that needs edits to connect them.
You can also keep an eye on Chatto. For WebRTC it requires LiveKit, but otherwise is self contained.
It looks promising, the UI looks much better. Other than the absence of a built in p2p livestream option, and an explicit no to federation.
