this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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Pretty much what it says on the tin, but for more context. My friends and I use Discord to play D&D and other TTRPGs. We also use it to send memes and just have conversations. We mostly do the chat, text, images, gifs, etc. But we also use the voice and video chat pretty regularly too. Screen share sometimes as well. So I'd like to try to find something that has all those features if possible.

The new ID or facial recognition requirement they are implementing is a deal breaker for a few of us, and so if I can set up some kind of alternative to make it a non-issue, I'd like to.

I'm running Ubunutu 22.04 LETS, AMD 3700X, 64GBRAM, 10x 6TB HDD, and and 2 4TB NVmE. Have a 2gb up/down internet connection. So I don't think we should have any issues making it work smoothly for 7 people.

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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Rocket.chat would be my first recommendation, tho it looks more corporate aimed. It also claims to support Matrix federation.

You could also give Jami a try, it's p2p so it doesn't need servers.

[–] clif@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

RocketChat is pretty easy to setup with docker. I couldn't get it to work in podman after many, many hours of trying despite the documentation saying it does. They have a dedicated podman doc page but I just hit problem after problem after problem. I was trying to do it with the containerized mongo as a PoC though - a lot of problems came from that (mongo connection). Maybe I'll try again with a "real" db server. Root cause seemed to be networking differences between docker and podman.

I found it really odd that your server has to get a registration key from their server... That part weirds me out.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I found it really odd that your server has to get a registration key from their server

Huh, I didn't know that, maybe that's only with the docker image? If not, that's bad news waiting to happen, I'm afraid :/

[–] clif@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Looks like you called it. Seems the container image(s) default to a subscription plan ("Starter", free for <50 users) but apparently you can revert to the "Community Edition" which gets rid of it.

Found this post over at the place we no longer speak of :

Hello, I'm Gabriel Engel, the founder of Rocket.Chat. I want to clarify that there is no new limitation for community use. We've recently introduced a plan offering all enterprise features for free to groups with fewer than 25 users. For those with more users, you have the opportunity to try the enterprise features. After the trial period, the system will automatically revert to the community version. However, you have the option to bypass the trial in the admin settings. I emphasize that we are not imposing any restrictions; instead, we're providing the enterprise version free to small teams and inviting larger teams to experience it. Let's view this as the positive initiative it is. For more details, please visit our forum: https://forums.rocket.chat/t/introducing-the-starter-plan-free-access-to-premium-features-for-limited-scale-use/18736

In the admin settings for your instance you can go to the "Subscription" panel and down at the veeeery bottom is a "Cancel Subscription" button (I'm on the free "starter" subscription, apparently). I'm assuming that's how you back out of it.

Once I have a chance to warn users that I'm about to do something potentially dramatic, I'll test it out and see what happens.

EDIT: Also found this in the RC forums (from 2 years ago) :

Note, if you upgrade or install new version of RC, it will automatically put you at a Starter or Pro plan, to go to the community, go to Admin settings, remove the key and it will put you back to the Community version… It took me a while to figure this out :slight_smile:

O, and the immediate next post is what I described above :

I believe community is still available within v6.6.0, but new instllation will put you automatically to the Starter Plan. You need to cancel subscription going to Setting → Subscription → Cancel Subscription