I'm in a tailscale network with everyone I want to chat with if that changes anything.

Must be/have:

  • Easy to roll out, not much harder/more involved than setting up something like discord ideally.
  • Clients available on Windows and Android and Linux of course.
  • Decentralized/Peer to Peer. I don't want to set up a server computer but I will if I absolutely must. All devices behave as if they're on the same LAN thanks to tailscale if that helps.

Would be nice to have:

  • Groups and sub groups like discord.
  • Stickers like telegram.
  • Voice/Video chat. I would miss desktop streaming a bit but I could always fall back to Discord if I must.

Is there anything at all like that? There are so many options it's kind of overwhelming.

  • machinya [it/its, fae/faer]
    ·
    3 days ago

    why p2p isn't popular

    my guess is because is quite hard to get it right in a generalized way. as you mention it, most people approach the internet as just consumers (not by choice) and p2p breaks this model. it requires interest and knowledge to succesfully use it and poses many problems not found in the standard client-server model (open ports, nat, global discovery). while there are known ways of solving them, they usually require workarounds and tend to have downsides. i remember following the tox development for a while and it had to use a central server for push notifications because general usage was very battery hungry.

    all of this problems make the projects quite niche so their development tends to be way slower than centralized one (usually sponsored by corpoations). they tend to lack user friendly interfaces and non-vital features so they fail to bring new users, specially non-technical ones. also, open source culture has been slowly going towards a corporate-friendly culture, making this type of software alien to many.

    edit: formatting

    • The_sleepy_woke_dialectic [he/him]
      ·
      3 days ago

      p2p ... poses many problems not found in the standard client-server model (open ports, nat, global discovery).

      Tailscale breaks through that pretty well. It really does "just work" It is centralized but to the absolute minimum required to break through the barriers between you, creating as direct of a physical connection as possible. I'm hoping one day soon something like it will come standard. I'm surprised there isn't an easy way to run matrix, but p2p over LAN. Tailscale could easily do the rest, including encryption.

      I agree whole heartedly about the corporate-friendly culture point. Particularly the abrasive culture of everything related to Gnome, yuck.