Self hosted Teams alternative?
from possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 21 May 23:52
https://lemmy.zip/post/39115184

I’m looking for something that can do chat, video calling with support for guess links and chats. I need it to work in the browser so I can send people a link to a chat session. Bonus if it has a simple mobile app and calendar integration.

Anyone know of something that isn’t Nextcloud Chat?

#selfhosted

threaded - newest

HelloRoot@lemy.lol on 22 May 00:00 next collapse

Jitsi

,but it is a pain in the ass to selfhost with good performance.

You can take a look here as well:

github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?…

One alternative that is not on the awesome selfhosted list is: edumeet.org

But it is even more of a PAIN to selfhost it.

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 22 May 00:00 next collapse

There is no way to do what teams does without significant infrastructure. Same with Slack and others.

If you want something that just gets close to the mark, look at Jitsi. It’s about as complete as you could expect for just video/voice.

What you may not understand about conferencing platforms is that they are dozens of different hosted services working together to provide a cohesive UE. Video, SIP, VOIP, auth, identity…these are all separate services that are deployed as microservices to get what you get. If you find the bare minimum of the services you actually need, you can probably cobble something together, but it’s not going to be a simple running of one service to get the same experience.

possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip on 22 May 00:08 next collapse

It isn’t that hard. All I’m looking for is a chat/video call service. Jitsi is close but it purely does video calling. I want something that is a chat where guests can join a group with a link. That shouldn’t take much. (It didn’t with Nextcloud)

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 22 May 00:52 next collapse

Well if “it shouldn’t take much”, then it shouldn’t be hard to find a solution, right?

I’m now wondering why you’re here asking this question if you fully understand what you’re asking about.

Brkdncr@lemmy.world on 22 May 02:03 next collapse

It’s not hard. Just Teams but self-hosted. Free would be ideal.

/s

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 22 May 02:15 collapse

Right? I just want to self-host something like Google and all their services, but free. It also has to run on an AMD K6-2 with 1GB of DDR1 RAM and under 20GB for storage. Please don’t ask me any questions, I know exactly what I’m doing.

RaccoonBall@lemm.ee on 22 May 03:45 collapse

Uhm actually the k6-2 took EDO or SDRAM. You won’t get it running with DDR.

moonpiedumplings@programming.dev on 22 May 21:45 collapse

It’s actually not that hard. (Well it is, media and networking are hard, but)

I think the problem is that when people search for something better than Teams (or any other software), they confuse “better than”, with a mostly nonexistent “best”. In doing so, they skip over the way every single thing people suggest is “good enough”.

Like, following this thread, we went from “I want a teams (voice/video/chat) alternative” to “Yeah I don’t like Jami because it leaks metadata.” How did we go from wanting a teams alternative, to wanting privacy with no metadata leakage? Those are very different things, and you make tradeoffs if you take one set of feature over the other. If you just add “no metadata leakage” on top of your current wishes, then you are probably going to be disatisfied with every option given.

Or “Firewalls and hole punching!” (implying a p2p architecture) and “depends on peers being reliable” (being frustrated with the pitfalls of a p2p architecture). Again, wtf? Of course there is software that is both p2p and client server, but that is hard and tradeoffs will end up being made, even purely in what the developer spends their limited time on.

This person just needs to get out of their head, whip up deployments for every software (or suite if there is more than one) mentioned in the thread, and pick the one that looks the nicest.

Ulrich@feddit.org on 22 May 04:26 next collapse

Jitsi is close but it purely does video calling.

Not sure what you mean by that. Turn off the camera and you’ve got an audio chat.

I want something that is a chat where guests can join a group with a link.

That’s exactly how Jitsi works.

Signal is not self hosted but they also support videoconference style calls.

possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip on 22 May 06:13 collapse

Jitsi is closer to Zoom than anything else

I’m looking for the chat plus the ability to start a call

Ulrich@feddit.org on 22 May 13:04 collapse

I see. What about Matrix?

oshu@lemmy.world on 22 May 06:04 next collapse

Then write a howto instead of asking here. That shouldn’t take much.

possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip on 22 May 06:15 collapse

Honestly I might put that on my list of cool projects

It is easier than you think. There are libraries that do Firewall/NAT traversal automatically so the hard part would be making the UI

oshu@lemmy.world on 22 May 12:07 collapse

It is easier than you think.

I never said how easy I think it is so what are you basing this response on?

mc@toot.houbahouba.de on 22 May 18:08 collapse

@possiblylinux127 mattermost should do the trick. @just_another_person

Smoolak@lemmy.world on 22 May 00:44 next collapse

I’m hosting a matrix server with a TURN server and it’s fairly easy to selfhost. This sounds exaggerated.

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 22 May 00:50 next collapse

That just covers voice/video. OP is asking about a lot more.

Colloidal@programming.dev on 22 May 02:21 next collapse

And chat. But yeah, no groupware.

possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip on 22 May 06:19 collapse

Video+chat is all I’m wanting for the most part

possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip on 22 May 06:20 collapse

Do you need Element for that? Also is there a way to do guest access with a link?

tekato@lemmy.world on 22 May 15:52 collapse

You can allow guest accounts, although it’s disabled by default in synapse.

Call supports depends on the client you’re using. Element is usually ahead in features implementation, but you can get a list of clients and filter by features in the matrix website.

Also I’m not sure what the other person meant by easy to setup. Matrix servers are notoriously hard to setup when compared to anything most things you would find yourself selfhosting, specially with WebRTC/TURN. I think there’s an ansible playbook somewhere, but I never tried it.

toastmeister@lemmy.ca on 22 May 19:48 collapse

If you want something to mangle the formating on his Office documents there really is no alternatives available sadly. Chat there is.

ryokimball@infosec.pub on 22 May 00:01 next collapse

I have not tried Matrix yet but I hear it’s a good replacement, fashioned more to the likes of Discord but I think it has everything you’re looking for

pescetarian@lemmy.ml on 22 May 13:09 next collapse

No!

nimmo@social.nimmog.uk on 22 May 17:31 collapse

I've been using matrix for quite a while now and I'm very happy with it.

The thing to be aware of though is that it takes quite a bit of work to get started, but once you've got it up and running it doesn't need much coddling. It's got video calling built into it now and can be entirely web based if you want it to be. I have all of my signal, WhatsApp and SMS messages being brodged over through it which is handy. I've also got a discord bridge set up which will bring all DMs and let's me bridge any of the servers I want to bring over.

it's been my one app for communicating with anyone that wants to talk to me on any IM platform I use, as well as any of the federated rooms and spaces I want to access from other home servers I want to work with.

Edit: I also recently added authentication via oidc which was great as now I don't need to worry about passwords as I just authenticate with passkeys on most of my self hosted services.

rimu@piefed.social on 22 May 00:50 next collapse

Check out Big Blue Button - https://demo.bigbluebutton.org/

Their website talks all about using it for teaching students but it's really just like Jitsi with more features.

moonpiedumplings@programming.dev on 22 May 04:34 next collapse

Big bluebutton is now integrated into Canvas, an open source learning management software (LMS) that every school I have went to has used.

[deleted] on 22 May 04:34 collapse

.

Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org on 22 May 03:41 next collapse

Anyone know of something that isn’t Nextcloud Chat?

Do you absolutely need to put ONE tag on it all and say this is it?

OmegaLemmy@discuss.online on 22 May 04:01 next collapse

Jit.si

OmegaLemmy@discuss.online on 22 May 04:01 next collapse

Self hosting allows you to improve screen share framerate

makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml on 22 May 04:40 next collapse

We use this at work. Great for screen sharing and video chat

corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca on 22 May 14:39 next collapse

  • no enterprise packaging
  • java?

I mean, that’s two strikes, but I know the people whom 8x8 bought in like 2019 so there’s hope. Like, wow, their video-conf app and service was astoundingly good.

gramie@lemmy.ca on 22 May 19:52 collapse

I like Jitsi, but when I record a session it always silently aborts after about 40 minutes.

blarth@thelemmy.club on 22 May 04:22 next collapse

I R fucking C. Who needs all the other garbage in teams?

rdschouw@lemmy.world on 22 May 04:23 next collapse

I haven’t tried it myself but Mattermost offers most of what you’re looking for.

github.com/mattermost

corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca on 22 May 14:29 collapse

I think a gitlab install has most of mattermost inside it, and that means installation and updates are handled. I found the install of MatterMost via its devs used to be very naive, but the gitlab people did something right in vendoring it into their massive install. Gitlab-ce is bloated as heck, but it’s fire-and-forget on the proper platform and may allow inter-org linking with or without the matter bridge thing (which itself affords some interoperability).

Ulrich@feddit.org on 22 May 04:23 next collapse

I think Mattermost is intended to be just that.

[deleted] on 22 May 04:34 next collapse

.

[deleted] on 22 May 04:34 next collapse

.

moonpiedumplings@programming.dev on 22 May 04:34 next collapse

You want either mattermost or the whole matrix stack (backend, plus element with voice/video calls).

Matrix/Element is more of a discord alternative, whereas mattermost tries to be more of a slack alternative, where it seems to have some calendar integrations.

inso@lemmy.sdf.org on 22 May 05:50 next collapse

Element Server Suite Community github.com/element-hq/ess-helm

theotherbelow@lemmynsfw.com on 23 May 00:51 collapse

I would suggest avoiding anything that is a “community” or “personal use only”. If its not fully open its not worth it.

nucleative@lemmy.world on 22 May 06:15 next collapse

Huly is pretty amazing and has a self host option. It supports chats and video calls, team rooms, and has some cool integration for speech to text note taking. It also functions as a task tracker.

Under super active development right now so host only if you can deal with occasional breaking changes.

dash_jackson@lemmy.ca on 22 May 06:20 next collapse

What’s their revenue model? Thanks for sharing

nucleative@lemmy.world on 22 May 06:22 collapse

They have a SaaS option as well, I’m guessing that’s the main revenue plan.

scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech on 22 May 13:46 next collapse

Idk, I’ve heard things about HooliChat… Didn’t their stream go down in the middle of a big title fight?

adhocfungus@midwest.social on 22 May 18:03 collapse

Plus that Gavin Belson guy keeps trying to jam his horrible signature into his products.

scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech on 22 May 19:28 collapse

That guy is the woooorst

corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca on 22 May 14:26 next collapse

Considering

  • nearly a curl|sh setup
  • to run supply-chain risks
  • of supply-chain risks
  • for something without an immutable artefact and thus is its own supply-chain risk

It’s already breaking ISO27002 in a few ways. I’m out.

theotherbelow@lemmynsfw.com on 23 May 00:54 collapse

Cloud based solutions in selfhosted are a hilarious suggestion.

nucleative@lemmy.world on 23 May 10:45 collapse

I’m selfhosting it on box next to me. Wasn’t so hard for me to find the GitHub link on their website.

sonalder@lemmy.ml on 22 May 06:51 next collapse

If you don’t mind seperated tools that do well in their own :

  • Zulip for chat
  • Jitsi for video meeting
  • And whatever calendar you want for the calendar
kebab@endlesstalk.org on 22 May 06:58 next collapse

I am afraid Nextcloud Talk is the only free option

nixxo@lemmy.world on 22 May 11:52 next collapse

I use jami but i dont think it fits your need for guess links.

Still leave it here just in case

jami.net

Jami is a free/libre, end-to-end encrypted, and private communication software.

possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip on 22 May 14:01 collapse

Jami is a stability and security nightmare

I wouldn’t recommend it

corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca on 22 May 14:20 next collapse

Care to expand on that? I am seriously considering that as part of my post-skype future.

possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip on 22 May 21:03 collapse

I would look into Jami, Signal and maybe Simplex Chat

nixxo@lemmy.world on 22 May 15:16 next collapse

Im using it for 3 months now and I did not notice any stability issue. One time I experienced a long delay in receiving a message.

Do you have any details on why its a security nightmare?

All communications are peer-to-peer and end-to-end encrypted.

possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip on 22 May 21:02 collapse

It is a massive code base which doesn’t seem to get a lot of maintenance due to lack of developers. Jami also lacks a security audit which doesn’t build confidence

From a security perspective it uses dTLS which isn’t great for metadata sensitive applications. Message delivery is also finicky since it depends on peers working reliably.

callcc@lemmy.world on 22 May 15:47 collapse

Please tell us more about the actual security problems!

possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip on 22 May 20:53 collapse

Have you actually dug into the internals? It is pretty bad. Large poorly maintained code base with poor cryptography. Theoretically it is fine but I’d rather use Signal.

lemonuri@lemmy.ml on 22 May 22:49 next collapse

It’s true there are a lot of better alternatives to jami when it comes to privacy/security: Here’s a good comparison table:

www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html

callcc@lemmy.world on 23 May 10:39 collapse

No, I rarely read the code of software I use, especially crypto code since thant’s not my thing. But good to know that you did. Thanks for your opinion.

airikr@lemmy.ml on 22 May 19:59 next collapse

I’ve been using self-hosted Jitsi Meet for a few weeks now. Works perfectly. Haven’t tried the calendar feature, though.

moonpiedumplings@programming.dev on 22 May 21:47 next collapse

I already made a comment but you should also look at rocketchat and revolt, since they are basically FOSS discord clones

(I saw comments in the thread about wanting audio only calls.)

Jhuskindle@lemmy.world on 22 May 23:45 next collapse

Vdo.ninja

ikidd@lemmy.world on 23 May 02:41 collapse

Matrix with the Jitsi meet plugin.