60
Alternatives to Discord and Twitch
(programming.dev)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
60 points (96.9% liked)
Linux
63789 readers
738 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Owncast already mentioned, and while it's good, it doesn't achieve real-time streaming like discord does. It's more of a twitch replacement for streamers with an actual audience thanks to it's ActivityPub support (in that people on stuff like mastodon can "subscribe" to the server).
MatrixRTC is still new and while it's already being used to provide voice channels in clients like element, cinny and commet, as of now none of them can stream gameplay with audio.
For this I'm currently using Broadcast-box. Self-hostable, but the dev also provides a public instance.
It uses WHIP to stream over WebRTC (OBS is compatible) to achieve less than half second latency. More than fast enough to feel like "real-time" if in a voice-chat with friends. And you can push the video quality past what any platform like youtube, twitch or discord will allow.
Owncast seems to do just fine for real-time streaming here...?
No?
The fastest I got it down to was about 30 seconds of stream delay. It's a limitation of HLS, which will never be truly fast.
Owncasts own guides state:
Sweet! Thanks for the recommendations!