I've managed to convince my friends to use Mumble just as the pandemic started. The initial suggestion was to use Discord, but I luckly averted that. I think that the wizard and the defaults in general can be improved, but it is not unmanagable. The only thing that can confuse people is the certificate security system, where a friend of mine complained they couldn't connect, but it was just a "Do you want to accept this certificate" popup that was in the way. That is an issue of general technical illiteracy, that Mumble cannot address.
> The only thing that can confuse people is the certificate security system, where a friend of mine complained they couldn't connect, but it was just a "Do you want to accept this certificate" popup that was in the way.
Is this because the server didn't have a certificate from a trusted CA? In which case the fix is that Mumble could integrate ACME to get certificates from Let's Encrypt or whoever
Or is the situation that Mumble doesn't integrate the WebPKI and so it expects the user to make trust decisions for each certificate, which is pretty hostile ?
> That is an issue of general technical illiteracy
I guess that's kind of true, but I'm not sure I should need to understand the correct range of manifold pressure for the engine in a motor vehicle to operate it, for example. "Just do what is obviously the correct thing" seems reasonable in both cases.
> Is this because the server didn't have a certificate from a trusted CA? In which case the fix is that Mumble could integrate ACME to get certificates from Let's Encrypt or whoever
In my experience, a lot of people who set up a Mumble instance don't have an actual domain name, so they can't get a CA certificate, only self-signed. Most people do set up at least a dynamic DNS of some sort. But as long as you're doing that, you might as well pay the extra $10/year to get a domain, in my opinion.
> Most people do set up at least a dynamic DNS of some sort.
Most dynamic DNS providers got a default shared domain name added to the Public Suffice List e.g. dyndns.example might be on the PSL and then you can have your server be named etskinner.dyndns.example when you call their dynamic DNS service.
In this case Let's Encrypt is quite happy to give you a certificate for etskinner.dyndns.example since you control it. Unlike a web server, the Mumble server can't trivially bake the elements needed for this into its functionality, but it shouldn't have a hard time in the two easy cases:
1. There is no web server for this DNS name, spin up a temporary web server, answer Let's Encrypt queries until they give you a certificate, then spin it back down
2. This machine is the web server, so, have the user tell us how to pass http-01 challenges on that existing web server.
That doesn't cover every corner case, and it is one more notch on your "Duplicate certificate count" rate limit if you do have an HTTPS web site on the same name from Let's Encrypt, but I'd guess 95% of users who have a working Murmur and either a Dynamic DNS setup or their own "proper" DNS setup would get a working system and a further fraction would have some trivial problem they'd fix and after that it would Just Work™.
I have some AdBlock and Anti-Tracker stuff configured. For each single login, discord makes me solve 2 captchas, enter my password twice and click on an emailed link. Fuck them.
On mumble however, I start the client and it just works. Also, it instantly reconnects should the connection break.
This gave me a giggle, perfect sentiment IMHO. Discord is basically saying "fuck you" at least 4 times each time you login, and the only appropriate response absolutely should be "no, fuck you"
It asks me the same even without adblock or tracker-blocker, because my IP address changes often. An annoying nightmare really when you "need" something from a Discord chat quickly. I stopped using it, insist on people emailing me or chatting on Telegram.
Has anyone found a good solution for paying for captcha solutions in your browser? I'm getting tired of solving captchas, and would pay a decent amount of money to be able to click one button and have it just solve it for me.
Can take a bit of time, but needs to be non-clunky.
Do you open it on Firefox with an ad blocker etc? If yes it may come from reCaptcha and not from Discord itself (I had the same issues on websites that use reCaptcha).
However, if you use the discord app you may not need to solve a captcha.
If not for anything else, then because Discord is a service owned by somebody, Mumble isn’t. The free and open web depends on people using the Mumble model.
It's a centralized, non-free service that feeds on people's data. That's horrible enough, but i'm guessing i can't even use it with a Tor browser? Mumble works plenty fine on the Tor network.
I haven't used Discord previously so i wouldn't know, but i read they use WebRTC. If so, then it wouldn't work with Tor Browser at all, which is built without WebRTC support for privacy reason.
On top of what has already been said, I found Mumble to be a better voice com tool than Discord, sound quality is better, shortcut mapping more extensive, etc ...
Discord having the slack-like features, video streaming and social networking integrated in a nice UI makes it a better all purpose consummer product unfortunately.
