Brief: Revolt is a promising free and open-source choice to replace Discord. Here, we take a look at what it offers along with its initial impressions.
Discord is a feature-rich collaboration platform primarily tailored for gamers. Even though you can use Discord on Linux with no issues, it is still a proprietary solution.
You can choose to use Element as an open-source solution collaboration platform, but it is not a replacement.
But, Revolt is an impressive Discord alternative that is open-source.
Note
Revolt is in the public beta testing phase and does not offer any mobile applications. It may lack some essential features that you find on Discord.
Let me highlight what you can expect with Revolt and if it can be a replacement for Discord on Linux.
An Open Source Discord Alternative That You Can Self-Host
Revolt is not just a simple open-source replacement, but you also get the ability to self-host.
It does lack a variety of features that Discord offers, but you get a lot of basic functionalities to get a head start to start experimenting.
Even without some features, you could mention it as a feature-rich open-source client. Let us look at the features available right now.
Features of Revolt
While it looks and feels a lot like Discord already, here are some of the key highlights:
- Ability to create your own server
- Create text channels and voice channels
- Assign user roles in a server
- Tweak the theme (dark/light)
- Change the accent color
- Manage the font and emoji packs from available options
- Custom CSS support
- Ability to add bots
- Easy to manage permissions for text/voice channels
- Send friend requests to other users
- Saved notes section
- Ability to control notifications
- Hardware acceleration support
- Dedicated desktop settings
- Self-hosting using Docker
- User status and custom status support
So, as something in the public beta testing phase, it sounds excellent for starters. You already get most of the core functionalities, but you may want to wait to see it as a full-fledged Discord replacement.
Initial Impressions of Using Revolt
If you have used Discord, the user experience will feel familiar. And that is a good thing here.
For this quick app highlight, I did not compare the resource usage of Discord and Revolt because it is still in beta and won’t be an apples-to-apples comparison.
However, in my brief testing, it felt snappy, except the case when you load up a text channel for the first time. When publishing this, it did not have the Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) feature but was supposed to be added in their first milestone (Version 1) release.
Some features like user status, permission management, and appearance tweaks looked useful. But, when it comes to the voice channels, it is not the same way as Discord works, at least for now.
I have no idea if they plan to do it the same way, but Discord’s voice channel feature is intuitive, fast, and with better controls.
Not to forget, Discord also offers “Discord Stage,” which is a Clubhouse-like audio room feature.
Some other features that I couldn’t find included:
- Ability to react to messages
- Noise suppression feature
- Change server
- Server logs
- Variety of useful bots
Of course, it will take a significant amount of time to catch up with the features offered by Discord, but at least we now have an open-source solution to Discord.
You can explore their project roadmap/release tracker to see what you can expect in its final/future releases.
Install Revolt in Linux
Revolt is available for Linux and Windows. You can choose to use it on your web browser without needing a separate application.
But, if you need to have it on your desktop, they offer an AppImage file and a deb package that you can grab from its GitHub releases section.
If you’re new to Linux, refer to our resources on using an AppImage file and installing deb packages to get started.
Feel free to head to its Feedback section if you want to help them improve with your bug reports and suggestions. Also, you can explore their GitHub page for more information.
In a related article, you may checkout these open source Discord bots.
What do you think about Revolt? Do you believe that it has the potential to become a good open-source replacement to Discord on Linux?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments down below!
