[HN Gopher] Discord client that works on Win95*, Win98 and above
___________________________________________________________________
Discord client that works on Win95*, Win98 and above
Author : Tiberium
Score : 241 points
Date : 2025-02-03 11:49 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| Tiberium wrote:
| * from the recent commit "V1.07 works on Win95. But you have to
| install a different LibCrypto, LibSSL, and also install the
| WinSock2 update."
|
| Download for the Win95 version:
| https://github.com/DiscordMessenger/dm/releases/tag/v1.07a
| zxvkhkxvdvbdxz wrote:
| Cool project, but it is missing central features of Discord such
| as voice and screen sharing.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I mean, it is for Win95 and Win98.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| What do you mean my 250mhz processor cant handle voice chat
| and screen sharing?
| johnisgood wrote:
| What I mean is, they are the potential limitations:
|
| 1. Modern VoIP applications are incompatible with Windows
| 95/98
|
| 2. Hardware availability
|
| 3. Networking issues
|
| 4. Driver support
|
| 5. Obsolete Protocols
|
| 6. Performance limitations (indeed, modern audio codecs may
| be an issue, incl. Opus and AAC)
|
| A 250 MHz processor can handle basic voice chat but with
| significant limitations, and there is much more to it when
| it comes to practice... so while technically a 250 MHz
| processor might (for historical experimentation or
| nostalgia), in reality it is not practical for functional
| use today.
| userbinator wrote:
| A Pentium 233MMX is capable of DVD playback, so I think
| voice chat is definitely possible. I've worked on VoIP
| phones that had slower CPUs and they handled a SIP stack
| just fine.
|
| A Pentium III 733MHz with 128MB RAM running Win98 works
| fine for (low-res) video chat. Been there, done that.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I know, but it is still not practical or suitable for
| functional use. Just to help you understand what I mean:
| obtaining such a CPU (with the rest of the compatible
| hardware) and obtain & install Windows 98 is not as
| straightforward these days. Sure it may be for me because
| I still have my old hardware, but still. And by the way
| (for another PC) I had to install Windows 11 because I
| had Windows 7 and all my programs stopped supporting it.
| Not practical either, sadly. I was forced to install
| Windows 11.
| ryao wrote:
| Install a Linux distribution and install your software in
| Wine.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I do use Linux (mainly).
| jasongill wrote:
| > A Pentium 233MMX is capable of DVD playback
|
| No they aren't. DVD playback on early systems was
| hardware based using an MPEG2 decoder (often included on
| the sound card that came packed in with the DVD drive, or
| on some video cards or dedicated MPEG decoder cards)
|
| Software playback of DVD's on a Pentium MMX at 233mhz is
| going to be limited to single digit framerates,
| especially if you are trying to decode Dolby Digital or
| DTS audio as well
| ryao wrote:
| I recall MSN Messenger supporting phone calls during the
| Windows 98 days. There should be no fundamental reason
| why it could not handle VoIP.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| The audio codecs in use on Discord are exponentially more
| CPU-intensive than what was used on MSN back then, and
| there's no GPU offloading.
| ryao wrote:
| I doubt they are using exponential time algorithms. They
| appear to be using Opus, which appears to be O(NlogN)
| worst case. Opus is also well known to be computationally
| cheap, like most (all?) audio codecs. It should run fine
| on the Pentium II.
|
| I would be more concerned about modern video codecs. None
| of them are exponential time, but they need so much
| compute that it is unlikely that a Pentium II could
| handle them.
| userbinator wrote:
| I'm not sure if Discord has options to fall back to H.263
| like the open standards world (SIP) does, but that's the
| classic codec from 1995 and would definitely be usable on
| the CPUs of the time; if that's still too slow, then
| there's always H.261 (1988) which is basically "motion
| JPEG but with interframes".
| trinix912 wrote:
| You're right and iirc it's what Microsoft did with their
| NetMeeting that worked on Windows 9x (although poorly by
| today's standards).
| eapriv wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they didn't mean "exponentially more" in
| the asymptotic complexity sense. They could be both O(N
| log(N)), but with dramatically different constants.
| trinix912 wrote:
| We should revive Microsoft NetMeeting!
| NexRebular wrote:
| or CU-SeeMe
| HeckFeck wrote:
| The modern protocols? Likely not, but it was absolutely
| possible back then:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_NetMeeting
|
| NetMeeting even used an open ITU protocol that could voice
| call other clients! The 90s were a different time.
| RestartKernel wrote:
| It'd be interesting to see this project develop further, if
| only to get WebRTC running on Win95 (iirc).
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| According to the author's bluesky posts, there's a few features
| missing from Win32s compared to regular Win32 that prevent this
| from being ported even further back to windows 3.1 easily.
| pjmlp wrote:
| "General limitations under Win32s (131896)", surviving
| technical note.
|
| https://ftp.zx.net.nz/pub/archive/ftp.microsoft.com/MISC/KB/...
| avisser wrote:
| This is screaming for a Raymond Chen post explaining the
| strange-but-true history behind it.
| ok123456 wrote:
| The first item on the list is pretty glaring: "Thread
| creation is not supported."
|
| This would be a show-stopper for a lot of things.
| Lammy wrote:
| The 's' does stand for 'subset' after all :)
| thebeardisred wrote:
| How long until they get slapped with a trademark claim?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Ripcord is a third party discord client that's been around for
| quite a while, as far as I'm aware they haven't run into any
| trouble. And they actually might get used as opposed to someone
| seriously trying to run discord on windows 95
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I think the root of the problem in this one is that it's
| named "Discord Messenger", Ripcord is reminiscent but not
| confusing.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| That's fair
| bathwaterpizza wrote:
| Same for Vencord/Vesktop
| _--__--__ wrote:
| Speaking as a ripcord user, it helps your unofficial client
| avoid being blocked when you don't update for years and fall
| behind on feature parity (though I personally don't miss most
| any of said features)
| kevingadd wrote:
| Why do you think Ripcord stopped getting updated? :)
| jeffwask wrote:
| I don't think Discord cares as long as their backend still gets
| to harvest all the data.
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| I thought they used to aggressively ban users on custom
| clients. They even got rid (years ago) of their API for non-
| bot clients. AFAIK they are currently against their terms of
| service.
| account42 wrote:
| Why would Discord need a trademark claim - they control the
| backend so they can shut down third-party clients and/or ban
| users using them whenever they want.
| userbinator wrote:
| Someone needs to get around to doing this for Microsoft Teams.
| fishgoesblub wrote:
| You'd need to somehow get it to work on Windows 10/11 first.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| I'm not sure one person has that much self loathing.
| rfw300 wrote:
| That's a morally questionable action--it might encourage some
| businesses to stay on Windows 98 even longer. And if that
| weren't bad enough already, the employees would also have to
| use Teams!
| amlib wrote:
| Joke's on you, I think nowadays it's more enjoyable to use
| windows 98/95 compared to 10/11.
|
| You may have to forego an always connected workflow but i
| guess that's good for your mental health too :)
| labster wrote:
| Back then they had the technology to build a solitaire
| program without advertising, now sadly lost to the mists of
| time.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Lol wtf. I just ran Solitaire (on Win10) for the first
| time. I was greeted by a several second loading screen, a
| prompt telling me to login to something or another so I
| can "Level Up" and gain XP rewards, then an error message
| because it failed to login to XBox Live that cycled
| through multiple times as I cancelled out, before finally
| allowing me the privilege of playing as a guest on my own
| computer. And then I get a splash page filled with
| advertising crap of other products, which then gives me
| more errors when I tried to 'x' out of it.
|
| What an ungodly abomination that is an utterly
| appropriate living metaphor for what "modern" OSs have
| turned into. I can't wait until everything also has "AI"
| shoved into it. It'll be great.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Watch ads as AI plays solitaire for you, now only $1.99.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Software has never been easier to make, there have never
| been more software developers, yet we are stuck with
| software monopoly
| vel0city wrote:
| That version of Microsoft Solitaire Collection released
| ~12.5 years ago.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Win 7 felt like that sweet balance between modernity and
| functionality, especially before Microsoft started
| backporting the "telemetry" and other "features" from Win10
| to Win7. Everything since then seems to serve little
| purpose other than revenue generation driven solely by
| forced obsolescence.
| yellowapple wrote:
| If Microsoft had just kept iterating on Windows 2000
| forever and never developed past XP/Vista/7/etc. I probably
| wouldn't be a Linux user today.
| unosama wrote:
| How is this any more morally questionable than forcing
| employees to upgrade to Windows 11?
| ivanmontillam wrote:
| I've been thinking of doing a native Skype client for years. I
| resented Skype 8 onwards.
|
| Skype 7.x was the last Delphi Skype.
| rvnx wrote:
| The last great one, before this abominable slow client that
| led to the exode from Skype.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Incidentally, Delphi itself jumped the shark at version 8.
| gigel82 wrote:
| Just beautiful. 64Mb of RAM and snappy due to native UI framework
| use. Compare it to the sluggish 1.2Gb of RAM that Teams uses
| (when not in a video call).
| yellowapple wrote:
| Even 64MB is a lot of RAM for a typical Windows 9x machine.
|
| Still good progress, though.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| every Proton based app tends to use min. 1GB of RAM. That's
| scary
| Tiberium wrote:
| *Electron, you almost got it :)
| HeckFeck wrote:
| MSN messenger would fit in well under 2MB back in the day. As
| we go up, we go down.
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| Maybe it's just my laptops (MacBook Air and Pro). But every time
| I open it, it's always "updating" (plugins?) before I can use it.
| Opening it in the browser is much faster.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| One of the advantages of running programs like this in the
| browser is that you download a fresh (with caching) version
| every time you reload the page.
| MortyWaves wrote:
| Desktop apps are in the best place to silently download and
| install updates. This can be with a schedule via OS, or some
| background service that is always running even if the main
| application isn't.
|
| This has worked very well for Chrome for a very long time,
| the only time it doesn't is for people like me that restart
| the computer only every couple of weeks.
|
| Discord could have a similar model but choose not to for some
| reason.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Rebooting is not necessary unless you have updated the
| kernel.
|
| Microsoft has generated billions of hours of bullshit labor
| pretending otherwise.
| Mashimo wrote:
| If you only open it every few days / weeks it will download the
| latest version, as they push regularly.
|
| If you open it every day and still get updates there might be
| something wrong.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Of course there's something wrong: you're using Discord :)
| Mashimo wrote:
| ok
| grishka wrote:
| It surprises me that they copied the suboptimal tablet-like UI
| layout of the official client. It's gotta be an MDI app with each
| chat in a separate window :)
| mrweasel wrote:
| My suggestion would have been a tab for each chat, but you're
| right, should be a separate window, to allow tabbing between
| them.
| grishka wrote:
| Tabbed chat windows are a newer invention than the 90s.
| Late-00s messaging apps all had the same, rather convenient,
| arrangement: a tall window with the contact/conversation
| list, and a tabbed window with your current conversations.
| Things like profiles and settings would also open in separate
| windows. But yeah that's my ideal desktop chat app UI tbh.
| It's a shame that out of the current ones, only Steam and
| Battle.net are like that, and those aren't even _messaging_
| apps, they 're game launchers with social functionality as an
| extra.
| Shorel wrote:
| I don't remember Pirch or mIRC being like that.
| Izkata wrote:
| Even AIM used separate windows for each chat in the 90s.
| mrweasel wrote:
| mIRC doesn't exact do that, the contact list is attached
| to the chat/channel window. Each window sort of exists
| inside the main window, but can be minimized to something
| that mimic a tab.
| perching_aix wrote:
| What do you find "suboptimal" and "tablet-like" about it?
| grishka wrote:
| The fact that it doesn't take advantage of the multi-window
| nature of desktop systems. Everything happens in one single
| large window -- like on an iPad.
|
| In particular, my issue with modern IM app UIs is that the
| chat _switcher_ is merged with the chat _list_. You can 't
| have multiple chats that you're currently active in open at
| once and switch quickly between them. If you switch away from
| a chat, you have to find it again in the list to return to
| it, possibly requiring a lot of scrolling and multiple clicks
| for what could've been one click or even a keyboard shortcut.
| Mashimo wrote:
| Ctrl + K on the official app lets you switch quickly
| between the last active channels.
|
| Ctrl + / lets you see all the short cuts.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >The fact that it doesn't take advantage of the multi-
| window nature of desktop systems.
|
| That's because nobody uses more than one window. Remember,
| Discord was for _gamers_ , not the tech zealot with a
| taskbar full of windows. Speaking from experience, I've had
| extremely low success trying to get normal people to
| understand windows. So a one-window-contains-all design is
| _great_ for normal people. This design is also shared by
| Skype, LINE, and other mainstream chat software. Modern
| email clients also follow this design paradigm.
|
| And if you still doubt me, remember: The two most popular
| operating systems in the world, iOS and Android, do not
| have windows.
|
| Windows are a failed analogy as files-and-folders, normal
| people do not understand them and software for normal
| people rightfully don't use them.
| bruh2 wrote:
| > Windows are a failed analogy as files-and-folders,
| normal people do not understand them and software for
| normal people rightfully don't use them
|
| Weird claim regarding files and folders. In my
| experience, my pretty tech illiterate relatives have a
| pretty strong grasp for them. Younger people do not,
| because they only use mobile computers that don't make
| frequent use of that abstraction.
|
| Why are they a failed analogy? What are normal people
| doing instead of using them?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >What are normal people doing instead of using them?
|
| They do things _very simply_.
|
| Most people _can not multi task_ , which means they only
| ever work with _one_ window at a time. They get
| immediately confused with multiple windows. Likewise
| files and folders, most people can 't grasp what they
| can't physically see so the very concept of files and
| folders inside a computer is pig latin and they just dump
| everything on their desktop which they can physically
| see.
|
| A _lot_ of tech nerd sensibilities are based upon very
| specific assumptions that just don 't apply to most
| people, normal people. Anyone who wants to say anything
| about human interface design needs to first go out into
| the real world and see how real, normal people actually
| use computers.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Do you really think others are "just" not "go[ing] out
| into the real world and see how real, normal people
| actually use computer"?
|
| I think we can afford to admit that this is a _bit_
| reductive and misrepresentative of the efforts required.
| grishka wrote:
| > And if you still doubt me, remember: The two most
| popular operating systems in the world, iOS and Android,
| do not have windows.
|
| You have to keep mobile and desktop OSes separate. Mobile
| OSes are for use on-the-go and mainly focus on content
| consumption and getting most out of a pocketable
| touchscreen. Desktop OSes, in contrast, are for
| productivity. People understand browser tabs, how would a
| tabbed chat window be so fundamentally different?
|
| > Modern email clients also follow this design paradigm.
|
| Email clients are different. You don't usually jump
| between messages/threads back and forth like you do all
| the time in IM clients when you're actively chatting in
| several conversations at once. You open them one by one,
| read them, and go do something else after no unread
| emails are left.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > You open them one by one, read them, and go do
| something else after no unread emails are left.
|
| On the contrary, I often have multiple emails open at
| once, since it's pretty common for me to need to
| reference information from other emails in the one I'm
| currently writing - usually to reference past
| conversations or lookup addresses that didn't make it
| into my contacts.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >People understand browser tabs
|
| My anecdata suggests they don't. I have tried teaching
| normal people how tabs work, but I might as well be
| speaking pig latin.
| grishka wrote:
| They don't on phones because _there_ they are hidden away
| and you have to know about them. I 've seen relatives'
| phones with hundreds of tabs open simply because they had
| no idea mobile browsers do that by default.
|
| But on desktop, tabs are plainly visible all the time and
| it's very easy to discover how they work.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Is there a pinworm outbreak in your neck of the woods?
| All of these concepts (MDI / Tabs) easily fly with anyone
| we deal with on a daily basis.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| All I can tell you is that when normal people don't
| understand windows, you definitely are not going to get
| them to understand windows in windows (which is what tabs
| effectively are).
|
| I hate all these simplified designs we see in computers
| now just like most of the other weird people here, but
| those designs are not for a lack of good reasons.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I'm still sad that Gajim (XMPP client) switched to this
| horrible design from their old one. There's now no
| XMPP/Jabber client left on Windows that's not optimized for
| MUC, only some like PSI/Miranda that lack support for some
| important XEPs.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Exception: Telegram Desktop, which has "Open in new window"
| in each chat's context menu.
| Narishma wrote:
| Too much white space.
| bakkoting wrote:
| Enabling "compact mode" in the settings helps a lot with
| that. My discord client looks a lot like my IRC client.
| Pavilion2095 wrote:
| I agree. All they had to do was to copy mIRC!
| omoikane wrote:
| > You might be able to use Mingw-w64, but you might run into
| trouble running the final product on anything newer than XP
|
| I rarely see a _maximum_ system requirement.
| bmacho wrote:
| It was quite common on Linux before docker
| liamkearney wrote:
| Not exactly the problem docker solves...
| unosama wrote:
| Welcome to the brave new world where modern OSes only get worse
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| There are old games which tied system state directly to
| computational power. A buddy recently tried to boot up some
| childhood relic (Descent 1?) and said pressing forward made you
| move at light speed and immediately crash into a wall. So,
| there is software with implicit maximums.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| This is why dosbox sets the virtual cpu clock.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Very common in old software.
| raphman wrote:
| Just a gentle warning: try out alternative Discord clients with a
| non-important account first. A few years ago, I used ripcord1 and
| got automatically banned by Discord - probably because I had
| started the original Discord client on the same computer, and
| this triggered some heuristics. Discord's first-level support was
| not willing to reinstate my account, and I had to2 track down
| their head of security on Twitter to get my account reinstated.
|
| 1) https://cancel.fm/ripcord/, no new releases since 2021
|
| 2) I'd not generally suggest this approach. However, since COVID
| we have been using Discord a lot for informal communication with
| our students. Losing access to a dozen course servers mid-
| semester was a huge problem for me.
| yellowapple wrote:
| The same thing happened to me with Telegram years ago, when I
| logged into my account using the Haiku port of Telegram's
| desktop client.
| reddalo wrote:
| Telegram allows third-party clients however
| taurknaut wrote:
| What incentive do they have to control the client? Does discord
| have ads?
| chrisldgk wrote:
| No third party ads like you might be thinking, but a lot of
| in-app upsells for discord nitro (their pro tier), server
| boosts, custom emotes and stuff like that. Their monetization
| scheme is very twitch-like, I'd not be surprised if they
| don't like you using third party clients that don't shove all
| of that in your face.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| And yet Twitch seems to allow BTT, which adds custom emotes
| and such that a user would normally need to pay for.
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| I haven't seen any streamers who officially put their sub
| emotes on BTTV/FFZ/7TV and enable them in their channel,
| so if anything they end up supplementing the sub emotes
| rather than providing a reason to avoid subscribing.
|
| Twitch could increase sub emote limits, but I'm not sure
| they would want to. Many emotes on FFZ et al are memes
| used in hundreds of channels and could not be used on
| Twitch even if copyright was not a concern due to
| violating many of the other sub emote guidelines:
|
| https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/emote-
| guidelines?language=e...
|
| So Twitch has no real reason to try and compete on this
| front. They just don't officially support it, which means
| anyone using the official Twitch app or not using any
| browser extensions will only see them as weird text in
| the chat. If Twitch updates the layout and breaks the
| extensions, the extensions will adapt, so power users get
| a ton of extra features at no cost to Twitch.
|
| While these services make money riding Twitch's
| coattails, anyone willing to pay for the premium tiers of
| these services is likely either a streamer who wants to
| load up more meme emotes for their chat to use (increases
| engagement) or is the kind of power user who subscribes
| to multiple streamers at tier 2 or 3, so I doubt they
| hurt Twitch's bottom line. If anything, going to war with
| these extensions would likely hurt their bottom line
| since features like FFZ's audio compressor make many
| streamers' terrible audio settings listenable.
| cudder wrote:
| Their official client also collects a disturbing amount of
| telemetry that they'll miss out on.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Reminds me of the time a friend on Discord mentioned a
| very specific brand of ramen I didnt google, only to see
| an ad for this very niche brand of ramen on Facebook when
| I opened Facebook two minutes later. I use Facebook and
| Instagram drastically less every time this happens. Cant
| make a cent off me if I am not on your platform.
| erk__ wrote:
| Mostly to combat bots as far as I am aware, and it can be
| hard to programmatically tell the difference between a
| malicious bot and a normal user using a 3rd party client.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| With all that AI and machine learning out here I was lead
| to believe that this is largely trivial now.
| itishappy wrote:
| Yes, Discord has ads.
|
| "Click this button to activate double XP in CoD" sort of
| thing
|
| They're fairly minimal and unobtrusive (and may even be opt-
| out), but also implemented with some minorly annoying dark
| patterns like being animated into existence in the middle of
| the toolbar. (I fairly commonly end up accepting "quests"
| when trying to change audio settings.)
|
| They also push Nitro the same way.
|
| https://support.discord.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/25516720403223...
| superkuh wrote:
| Yep. Discord is not a chat protocol. It is a proprietary
| corporate service. The reason you can't use alternative clients
| for their service is (the TOS and...) that the client spies on
| you and that data is (part of) your payment.
|
| They send a tracking request for every single thing you do in
| their client. Clicked on someone's profile, clicked on a
| channel, clicked on a server, etc. The URL was named /track
| before but they renamed it to "/events" and then recently
| "/science" (but it's still a POST with no response).
|
| Also their desktop client is literally a remote administration
| toolkit, it has full access to FS (electron app) and it loads
| every script from their servers. On launch the desktop client
| opens websocket server for command and control listening.
|
| They can just add something like
| require('fs').readFileSync(process.env.HOME +
| '/.ssh/id_rsa').toString() and send this to their servers, and
| you won't even notice that (since it doesn't require an update
| on client because the client is just a browser with full
| permissions that loads obfuscated code from their servers every
| time you launch it).
| neilv wrote:
| I'm always saddened when I see an open source project's page
| say something like "Join us on Discord!"
|
| I can understand an open source project being on GitHub,
| since, at one point, they were a pretty warm-fuzzy place, and
| so attracted a lot of open source projects, before they sold
| out to Microsoft.
|
| But I really don't know how so many open source projects
| looked at Discord, early on, and thought that's a good idea.
|
| AFAICT, Discord is pretty antithetical to open source and,
| especially, libre software.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Because there isn't a good replacement in open source
| software. Matrix and others are pretty normie hostile.
|
| I help run a few Discord servers and due to financials, I'm
| always worried about extremely hostile actions by them to
| make money.
|
| My list of things good open source replacement would have:
|
| Decentralized chat servers with history
|
| Run a optional centralized login service so users have one
| login
|
| Optional centralized service knows what servers the user is
| a member of so any client they login to will automatically
| know which servers they are member of.
|
| Centralized Mobile Notification service
|
| Federation is absolutely not a requirement or a way around
| this.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > others are pretty normie hostile
|
| This is a fairly reasonable generalisation to make about
| the vast majority of open-source software. 'Normie-
| hostile'.
| kurisufag wrote:
| i've semi-successfully moved a university linux users
| group onto matrix fwiw, with most people (regular discord
| users) happy using element's desktop/mobile UI.
|
| it's as close to a discord-y experience as you're likely
| to get.
| stackskipton wrote:
| University Linux User Group I would say is already not
| normies.
|
| When I say normie, they are not posting on Hacker News
| and never heard of Y Combinator ;) They are your non tech
| friends and a lot of open source needs to interact with
| them where they are. Where they are is Discord.
| mdaniel wrote:
| > Because there isn't a good replacement in open source
| software
|
| https://github.com/zulip/zulip/blob/9.4/LICENSE (Apache
| 2) and if you mean "good [hosted] replacement"
| https://zulip.com/for/open-source/
|
| It, of course, does not speak to your decentralized
| wishlist but I'm sure they'd welcome an issue describing
| your goals
| s2l wrote:
| I really want to use zulip but last I checked they
| charged for push notifications. Without it, my group lost
| interest in using it due to missed messages.
|
| I saw a post about webpush a day ago. Not sure if
| anything has changed for zulip in that area.
| alya wrote:
| If you are using Zulip for an open-source project or a
| community, you are likely eligible for our free Community
| plan, which includes push notifications.
| https://zulip.com/help/self-hosted-billing#free-
| community-pl...
|
| We charge businesses for our push notifications service
| because we need folks using our 100% open-source product
| to run their business to help pay the cost of developing
| it.
| unosama wrote:
| Things become less normie hostile as more people adopt
| it. Two decades ago reddit was normie hostile.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Reddit was never normie hostile. It may have not been
| mainstream but hostile to your average user, no. You
| logged in with a browser like Facebook, you could
| subscribe or not to any subreddit you wish, those
| subscriptions would show up on any browser/mobile app you
| logged in on, everything was stored for you server side.
| Centralization is what most normal people expect. They
| don't want to futz around with remember things or having
| to setup the clients every time they switch. They want it
| all there every time on every device.
| foresto wrote:
| > Matrix and others are pretty normie hostile.
|
| Judging by the design choices I've seen in Matrix 2.0
| beta clients, this seems to be changing. A few important
| fixes and a lot of UI simplification are falling into
| place. I would not be surprised if I could get my family
| members using it once these are all integrated in fully
| functional clients. Here's hoping.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I agree with you in principle but in practice there aren't
| really any good options.
|
| You either have something relatively niche that's open but
| people are unlikely to have installed and is often non-
| trivial for project maintainers to set up and maintain. Or
| you have something that solves those concerns but is
| proprietary and sometimes even actively hostile to 3rd
| parties.
|
| It feels like the whole messaging ecosystem has taken
| several steps backwards over the last 20 years.
| mdaniel wrote:
| I'll point out that everything is relatively niche until
| it becomes popular, and then it's "well, what else would
| you use?!" and that's how Discord even became a thing
| that anyone would mention. Or this weird thing named
| Slack - pfft, who would use a chat named that
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Sure. But it's not a project maintainers job to make an
| unrelated communications tool popular.
|
| Plus there's also the problem of finite time and
| proprietary tools just being more convenient.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| WebChat + IRC server works just fine, only requires a
| browser for somebody to drive-by use, and allows more
| serious/heavy users to use whatever client they want.
| Install a logging package on the IRC server to make logs
| available publicly and searchable (or you can just have a
| bot user that does this if you're using an IRC server
| that someone else is hosting).
|
| This was the norm in the late-90s through about 2010 and
| then suddenly it wasn't good enough.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I'm old enough to have not only used IRC in the 90s but
| to have also written my own IRC client.
|
| The problem with IRC is exactly what you described
| yourself. You "just" need to install a half dozen things
| to get a modern experience and it's not something that
| either the project maintainers nor casual uses of your
| project are going to want to do.
|
| I loved IRC for a decade or so and even I can't bring
| myself to officially support it on my open source
| projects. It's just a distraction -- time that could be
| better spent actually writing code or supporting users
| and other contributors.
|
| I don't support Discord either, but I get why other
| maintainers might like the zero-effort solution. It
| enables them to focus on the project and not building
| auxiliary services.
|
| This is the problem that people miss when they talk about
| "just use x"... they forget that being a project
| maintainer is a massive time sink and time is finite. So
| we sometimes have to make trade offs. If it's a choice
| between configuring IRC or that highly requested new
| feature, then few maintainers are going to pick IRC.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| I'm part of an open source project with a self-hosted
| Discourse forum. It's just better in every aspect.
| (Discourse even has built-in DMs and chat.) I find it
| incredibly sad that people generally have moved away from
| open forums to proprietory silos like Discord or FB groups.
| bri3d wrote:
| > that the client spies on you and that data is (part of)
| your payment.
|
| What value do you think this click tracking data has? I'm
| genuinely curious. To me this seems like Product Manager
| Telemetry, which is still an insidious and pervasive privacy
| problem (see: Microsoft Windows), but I can't quite
| understand how this is a You Are the Product situation. What
| purchaser is going want to buy data about where people are
| clicking on the Discord client? What value does this provide
| them?
|
| > Also their desktop client is literally a remote
| administration toolkit, it has full access to FS (electron
| app) and it loads every script from their servers.
|
| A full-fledged desktop app could also load code from a server
| and execute it. Or just install an "automatic update." If
| you're worried about this kind of thing you should be
| sandboxing every application that can access the Internet.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| It doesn't matter how much value it has. If you pay in
| dollars, and suddenly the dollar is deflated to way less
| value than the euro, _you have still payed_.
| liendolucas wrote:
| Thanks for that! Wasn't aware of the aggresive tracking nor
| their remote admin capability. This screams to be
| containerized at all costs. I will try to reduce its use to
| the bare minimum and only from the browser as I've been doing
| so far and will ever install their client.
| unosama wrote:
| Stop voluntarily communicating through platforms that so easily
| ban you.
| yungporko wrote:
| so virtually every platform on the entire internet?
| vetrom wrote:
| Yes. Centralized platforms and people unwilling to act
| against the aggregation effect are drivers of the market
| capture that make these antiuser activities normal.
| keb_ wrote:
| I hear you, but the people I want to communicate with refuse
| to use platforms that don't so easily ban you.
| raphman wrote:
| In this case, it was not my choice. I preferred other tools
| but network effects resulted in Discord becoming our group's
| primary mode of real-time communication for online courses
| and within the group.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Let me go tell all my friends that. Why'd you waste your
| digital breath on such an inane comment?
| keb_ wrote:
| I used to love Ripcord, but I wish the developer would take the
| FastSpring payment button off their site. I paid back in 2020
| or so because it was fantastic back then, and I had hope
| development would continue. The Slack implementation is
| completely broken now, and the Discord implementation got so
| buggy, I finally made the switch to using the official Discord
| client in my browser instead.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Time to stuff this into BoxedWine (https://www.boxedwine.org/)
| and we'll finally have a fast, lightweight chat client for
| Discord!
| dzdt wrote:
| As I get older (and watch my parents get much older) I see a
| desire for a completely stable computer system that continues
| to work exactly the same way for timescales of decades.
| Currently this is impossible in the Windows or Mac ecosystems
| -- the operating system will go out of support, and force an
| upgrade, and then things will work differently. And maybe the
| upgrade requires new hardware, and then there is no way to
| bring your old programs across and hard to bring all your data
| across and then everything is different. Maybe its possible in
| the linux ecosystem, though there sure are a lot of people
| saying you have to stay on the update treadmill or else you'll
| get eaten by the script kiddies and their internet worms.
|
| Maybe there is an approach using something like BoxedWine, to
| have a stable user-facing system that can be 100% ported to new
| hardware or underlying OS?
| alanbernstein wrote:
| As I get older, I accept that nothing humans make can last
| without maintenance, and that for computer systems in our
| growth economy, that maintenance has to be equivalent to
| change.
|
| It sucks, but the repeated aggravation of broken expectations
| is worse.
| userbinator wrote:
| _the operating system will go out of support_
|
| That doesn't mean it stops working, and I know there are
| plenty of communities providing unofficial support for old
| Windows and even DOS. The situation with Mac may be similar
| but smaller, just due to relative popularity.
| timw4mail wrote:
| While this is mostly true, with how much software is web
| based, and how web browser support is essentially only on
| supported OSes, OS support does matter.
|
| This is less of an issue for DOS and Windows 95/98 because
| software in that era was offline-first.
| M95D wrote:
| Not possible.
|
| The most important thing you will need is to access digital
| banking and government services. These apps already requires
| you to have an updated and locked-down system.
|
| If you disregard that requirement (let's say you'll replace a
| tablet periodically, just for banking and government
| services), the next important thing you will need is
| communication. That means an updated browser that can open
| the future generic wordpress-based website, discord, twitter
| or whatever platforms will be popular when you'll be old.
| These platforms already require an updated browser, and
| updated browsers require updated OS, which require updated
| hardware too.
|
| You don't actually need a "completely stable computer
| system". What you need is a secretary.
| worble wrote:
| It's entirely possible - just stop redesigning your UI
| every 3 years to justify someones paycheck.
|
| No-one cares if the underlying architecture changes, so
| long as the user facing experience remains stable.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| At no point in history has everyone "just", and they're
| not going to start now.
| M95D wrote:
| I'm replying to my own post with new info.
|
| Actually, there's another way to do it. It's what _I_ am
| doing, I just didn 't realise it until now. :)
|
| Reserve a room in your house for your own computer history
| museum. Use old systems, running old software, doing old
| tasks that you learned years ago. Never update, never
| upgrade. Each time you need something new and it doesn't
| work anymore on the systems that you have, buy another new
| system and add it to your collection. Keep using it for
| that task and newer, while continuing to use the old
| systems for the old tasks. Virtual machines work too.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| I have been running the same Debian stable install (disk
| transplanted or cloned from the previous machine) since 2004
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The trick is to put an interface computer between the (user)
| computer and the internet.
|
| The user computer remains unchanged through the decades. The
| interface computer is updated with all the security updates,
| and communicates requests back and forth between the user
| computer and the internet, ensuring format compliance. It
| also contains software to convert file formats from newer
| version to the user computer compatible versions (where
| possible). For example, converting Word document format to
| some old version.
| notachatbot123 wrote:
| It looks so snappy and efficient
| EmilyHughes wrote:
| I miss these kind of applications. Nowadays everything is flat
| tons of wasted space, unresponsive and eats 300mb ram because
| it runs on electron. Just compare windows 11 task manager to
| windows 2000 task manager.
| timw4mail wrote:
| Or Windows Control Panel vs the Settings App.
| M95D wrote:
| Win2000 task manager was absolute crap. I already wrote why
| here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41549102#41576689
| 0x0 wrote:
| Looks like the security/integrity of SSL isn't taken too
| seriously as the build recommends to use a hex editor to replace
| "_strtoi64" and "_strtoui64" with "functions likely to return 0
| such as iswxdigit" in order to successfully link OpenSSL on
| windows 2000 and earlier. Unclear what impact such a hack would
| have on the integrity of the crypto operations performed by
| OpenSSL?
| YPPH wrote:
| It's unlikely people running applications on an operating
| system that stopped publishing updates over 20 years ago care
| very much about that.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Open protocols are eternal. Proprietary garbage lasts as long as
| the company does.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| So many good memories when seeing such design... I wonder why
| things got so complicated nowadays
| Pavilion2095 wrote:
| That's a fun project. But I wonder: is it a good idea to connect
| to the internet from these old systems?
| rschiavone wrote:
| That's the beauty about fun projects. They don't have to be
| good ideas.
| bilekas wrote:
| Absolutely not.. It is fun to watch what happens though.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssTIx0qm2to
| diggan wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but the conclusion from that video
| seems to be that it's OK to connect Win98 to the internet in
| 2024, as nothing really happened?
|
| I expected the installation to be infected very quickly, but
| seems it just got a bunch of port scans and not much more
| than that.
| bilekas wrote:
| I was expecting it to be worse to be honest, but thinking
| rationally about it, how many people would be targeting
| win9x these days ?
|
| Security by 'obsolete' !
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| For awhile mirai botnet was able to infect anything using
| upnp and a default credential within 20 minutes of it being
| connected.
|
| These days ISPs are better about shutting that kind of
| thing down. They monitor for botnet activity in their
| networks and their modem/router gateway combo devices are a
| lot more robust than they were in the 00's. It is also more
| acceptable now than it was to ship routers with upnp turned
| off by default, which helps A LOT.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Unfortunately, that also tends to come with the inability
| to turn upnp (or any port forwarding whatsoever) back
| _on_.
|
| For example, I'm paying double the local market rate of a
| 1gbit connection for ~150-300mbit connection, and I can't
| even change my WiFi password or SSID. That's just how
| everyone expects renting to be these days. It's not worth
| the hassle to fight it, so I just hack around with
| tailnet instead.
| vel0city wrote:
| I wouldn't give it a public IP with no other firewall but
| plugged in at home temporarily from time to time behind a
| decent firewall it's probably fine unless you've already got
| Mirai botnet stuff happening in your home.
| amelius wrote:
| If you use [1] you can run it on Windows 3.1.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42959775
| anthk wrote:
| Cool, but Bitlbee can proxy any IRC client (even for DOS and
| Windows) against some server and use your accounts (even
| Mastodon) over IRC.
|
| https://bitlbee.org
| nottorp wrote:
| Minimum system requirements: 64 Mb RAM.
|
| Hear that, official Discord?
|
| ---
|
| Now, considering this project will be hunted down and DMCA-ed or
| C&D-ed soon, has the original author considered separating the
| generic messenger UI code from the transport code to make the
| codebase usable for less ... jealous ... services?
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Got curious and checked. A Discord tab used ~500MBs. Other big
| sites (YT, FB, etc) were also at hundreds of MBs. Web bloat is
| real.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| libpurple plugin would be amazing
| kkkqkqkqkqlqlql wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated, but it's crazy to see how durable Windows
| APIs are. I, for unrelated reasons, last month, opened Guitar Pro
| 4, which had been laying around in my warez folder (copied many
| tines accross hard drives) since I pirated it circa 2004 as a
| teenager, and it worked perfectly in my machine running windows
| 11. Even though I love Linux, that doesn't happen over there,
| right?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Definitely not. I have a few legitimately purchased Linux
| releases from GOG that fail to launch on a modern distribution.
| Have to use the Windows build plus Wine.
| k_roy wrote:
| I used to love cordless. I could be on an old Sparc machine or
| even DOS on a 486 and access Discord.
|
| Unfortunately the only thing alternative clients for are good for
| now is getting banned.
| liendolucas wrote:
| I still don't get why so many channels that should probably be on
| IRC moved to Discord. Yesterday I tried to share the output of an
| strace and apparently I have to pay to emit more than 2000
| characters. Login to Discord is something that shocks me: every
| single time I'm told that I'm logging in from a new computer
| (wrong). Confim I'm human. Then need to check my email. Confirm.
| And relogin. This at least to me happens every single time.
| Reported to Discord obviously in vain. Never experienced such a
| login disaster in my life.
|
| What is wrong with IRC and mailing lists that everyone jumped to
| Discord? Since I have started to use Discord couldn't find a
| single good thing about it.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| This feels like a generational thing, tbqh.
|
| One of the reasons people trumpet for moving to Discord is "it
| keeps the message history!!!!!!!" which would be nice if 1)
| Discord's search wasn't a wet bag of cat ass, 2) if anybody
| _bothered_ to search for their question first (tale as old as
| time / song as old as rhyme / RTFM n00b), and 3) their platform
| wasn't moderated by and largely used of groomers.
|
| It's not like you can't log IRC channel chat and make it
| available for search and BONUS, assuming Google doesn't replace
| everything with AI, it's easily discoverable through Google or
| other search engines once they get crawled.
| alberth wrote:
| > What is wrong with IRC and mailing lists that everyone jumped
| to...
|
| Why did forums emerge ... like HN or Reddit.
|
| Lots of technologies/platforms accomplish the same end goal.
| It's more about where have people gathered (network effects)
| and valuable information shared.
|
| (Not many people are on IRC these days, and as a result - less
| valuable information can be found there)
| glompers wrote:
| I do regret the jump from desktop computing to mobile, but
| mIRC for example didn't jump while Discord, Meta, and the
| other advertiser-pleasers went in mobile-first.
|
| mIRC for instance: Linux - use Wine
|
| MacOS - run mIRC inside a Windows emulator, with no plans to
| change that, although it is compatible with other Mac-ready
| IRC clients that you can use to talk to the same people
|
| Similar situation for Android and iOS compatibility
|
| Source: https://www.mirc.com/mac.html
| vel0city wrote:
| > every single time I'm told that I'm logging in from a new
| computer (wrong)
|
| You're probably doing a lot of things to protect your privacy,
| things which prevent Discord from recognizing you're logging in
| from the same machine. Logging in from a browser? Wiping all
| the cookies and storage every time? Surprised it doesn't
| recognize you?
| tobylane wrote:
| 2000 characters seems like it should be on a pastebin, not
| pasted into an IRC channel. I've shared pastebin links in a
| discord channel, one shared with matrix. For reference, that
| content length is three times the OP comment.
| gosub100 wrote:
| > What is wrong with IRC
|
| The UX sucks (even if there are a thousand UX's and some of
| them don't suck, they get drowned out by the sucky ones) and
| the friction is too high to get started.
|
| > and mailing lists that everyone jumped to Discord?
|
| They did UX right and lowered the friction. I doubt Discord
| actually poached users from IRC, they just made chatting great
| again.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| IRC is terrible the same way it was terrible when I used it 30
| years ago.
|
| It's Y2K brah if you can't paste an image into chat, your chat
| is garbage.
|
| Chat is more than text, unless you go to meet your friend for
| coffee and you chat by typing out words on a typewriter and
| handing sheets of paper back and forth between each other.
|
| And that's like one of the ten thousand problems with IRC.
|
| "But it's lightweig..." so few people care about how
| lightweight it is that the statement "nobody cares how
| lightweight it is" is only off the mark by a millimeter or two.
|
| Two more problems are: the ratio of dickheads-to-humans and
| security flaws so bad that any organization releasing a spec
| that bad today would be pilloried as either incompetent or
| actually literally malicious every day, by everyone, all of the
| time, on hacker news.
|
| ps: the limit for IRC is 512 characters. If you try to paste an
| strace into an IRC chat if your client and server are good it
| will be broken up into multiple messages, if they are bad the
| message will be discarded, and regardless of if your message
| makes it from your client to everyone else, you will probably
| be autobanned for flooding.
| jasode wrote:
| _> What is wrong with IRC and mailing lists that everyone
| jumped to Discord?_
|
| You're looking at it from the perspective of a chat
| _Participant_ instead of an Owner /Administrator.
|
| For the owners+admins, the other alternatives of IRC, email
| mailing lists, forum software like vBulletin, phpBB, etc
| require extra work of provisioning a server and maintaining it.
|
| From the perspective of the chat topic owner, Discord is the
| simpler than any of the above. Just click "Add A Server (+)"
| and start sending out invites in seconds.
| (https://support.discord.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/204849977-How-...)
|
| In other words, the tradeoff is it's more hassle for some
| participants (like you) but it's less hassle for the topic
| administrator.
|
| Another feature that's important to some Administrators that's
| not easily available on a self-hosted IRC server is blocking
| bots or lower-quality participants via Discord's _"
| Verification Level"_: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/216679607-Veri...
|
| Turning that knob will also annoy some potential participants.
|
| EDIT ADD a link to help illustrate the reply about "RBAC"
| implemented in Discord: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/214836687-Disc...
| daheza wrote:
| Discord also has implemented an RBAC system that makes
| permissioning simple.
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