2mo ago

I make Peersuite, a p2p encrypted discord alternative

Hey everyone.

I make Peersuite, an opensource free communication platform.

It's private by default, there's no sign-in or email collection.

It's peer-to-peer, there's no server, after discovery you are connected directly to your friends my AES-GCN encrypted WebRTC channels. It forms a mesh and identifies superpeers. Because there is no server, in order to save your data between sessions, you can download your workspace into a password encrypted file. Happy to answer any questions.

FEATURES:

chat with images, PMs, channels, and file send
group audio/video calling
screensharing
kanban board
whiteboard for diagrams/flowchartswith PNG export
collaborative document editing with formatted PDF export

The best way for self hosting is docker, its on dockerhub as openconstruct/peersuite. You can also download desktop versions from the github or use on the web at https://peersuite.space/

github - https://github.com/openconstruct/Peersuite

41 comments

It's peer-to-peer, there's no server
The best way for self hosting is docker
🤔
- I've looked into the sources because that was weird to me as well.
  It's because the web "client" is using nginx as a local web server. You're selfhosting the web client
  The app still is 100% a frontend js client
  OP did link to their public instance of the client, but gives more opportunities
- Yes, it takes an initial connection for discovery. The peers need to know how to find each other.
  
  If there's no account, how do I "log in" to my community or whatever
It's html and javascript, the release comes with loose chromium files, ffmpeg binary and a 190MB executable. The link typo hasn't been fixed in hours, they don't link to the github, they misuse terminology, etc. and it's version 0.3.
That's a no from me.
- The link typo hasn't been fixed in hours,
  Whoa, hey, they're not paid on-call. Give it a few days.
  
  I've been babysitting my granddaughter, just got on the laptop.
- That's fair, the project is about a month old, the electron releases will get an installer for some platforms.
  
  Yeah it's an early version and I have no doubt that you guys will make it a lot neater, and it seems like a nice project. I just think it breaks several basic rules of privacy and security oriented programming, which is why I don't think it's a good fit for this community just yet.
And revolt was right there being all open source and stuff
- But it's not decentralized
- You mean Matrix, surely
- Revolt is not E2EE, h fortunately.
- Go tell 'em! Why have alternatives if we can just put all our eggs in one, holey, basket?
Is this open source? Otherwise this feels like a honey pot.
- Asked the same question I was gonna, so I did the googling.
  https://github.com/openconstruct/Peersuite
  AGPL
This needs to be widely known. I didn't test all the functions yet, but if this works, this is big!
That's so cool, but wouldn't everyone need automat port forwarding/opening like UPnP IGD / PCP to initiate connection? Not everyone has this enabled
- Not trying to shill, but seems like a perfect opportunity to integrate Tailscale for network access and then use the funnel feature to connect to peers.
  
  As good as tailscale is, I do so loathe it. It does make things easy, but I have to trust a 3rd party with my traffic and for me thats just no bueno.
The website gives a 404 error
- I removed the dash at the end. Guess it was a typo
I'll spin this up in docker and check it out tomorrow
OK, so I tested Peersuite with a friend and I have to say: wow! We have collected a bit of feedback we would like to share:
Positive: The audio, video and screenshare quality is outright amazing and much better than Discord. We had no crackling, delays or any other disturbances in any of those features. The UI is simple and functional, and everything is snappy and fast. It is also very easy to setup a workspace and to find yourself around the overall UI.
Negatives: There appears to be no option to also share audio while screensharing, which currently is a major drawback for us. There is no dedicated audio channel. As soon as someone starts an audio call, you'll hear the person no matter what. Only if you purposely join the call, will the others hear you. Opting in and out of an audio channel like in Teamspeak or Discord would be nice. When my friend started a video call, the audio input of the webcam's microphone got activated, so I heard him twice. When he turned off the video call, the webcam's microphone stayed activated. Once someone shared their screen or their webcam and turned it off later, you would still see them in the video and screenshare menu but with the picture being black. We would expect to be gone when closing the stream. There is no option to adjust the volume of an individual user. It would be nice to assign users to carts or columns on the Kanban Board. It would be nice to adjust the size of the Collaborative Whiteboard.
It might seem like we are complaining a lot, but we actually really like the experience so far, so thank you very very much!! Once you can also share audio with your screen, and once we can setup our own persistent server (and maybe be able to adjust the volume or mute a user, and have the audio room a bit more isolated from the rest), we are ready to jump ship.
- Awesome! Real world testing finds things I never have! I'm going to improve a lot of things based on this, thanks for the input.
  I have actually never thought of audio while screensharing, In my head it was mainly for people to watch videos and games. That's an easy fix. Opting out of audio is easy enough. Audio and Vido shouldnt happen at the same time, thats a bug. Seeing a blackscreen after sharing is also a bug. I can implement per-user volume easily enough. User assignments in kanban is already on the roadmap. Adjusting the size of the whiteboard, this one is probably not going to happen. It was a real struggle getting it working as good as it does now. It should scale to your screen for the most part. I may re-implement Zoom in/out for drawing.
  It doesn't sound like complaining, this is what I need, thank you for your input!!
Libre Software? Push-To-Talk?
- Sentences?
  OP not your pet
I have been searching for a discord alternative for so long 😭 THANK YOU THANK YOU! Cannot wait to start testing this out with friends 😃
How do we get this listed on ~~alternative.to~~ alternativeto.net ? Would love to get this posted on there for more folks to find it on their own prerogative!!
- It's on alternativeto.net needs upvotes https://alternativeto.net/software/peersuite/
  
  Ah nice, seems I misremembered that URL also! Fixed my comment 🙂
  So excited to see this progress!! 😃❤️
Amazing!
This looks very promising, thank you very much! Going to fully test it out tomorrow.
Is there anything planned to have a persistent server option (self-hosted)?
- Yes, I plan to create a node server for permanent rooms. It will allow you to name the server, which then acts like a superpeer and keeps the workspace open and saves progress every 10-30 minutes.
  
  Wonderful! The possibility to spontaneously hop on the server to look whether a friend is online or not is very important at least for us compared to the necessity of having to set up the room each time (which would require us to coordinate beforehand that we want to hangout in a voice channel).
I don't want to rain on your parade, but to claim you're a Discord alternative is like saying a box is a an alternative to a luxury resort. You've got a lot of work to do before being a Discord alternative.
- Yeah, some consider a room in a Prison a luxury resort 🤷‍♂️!

41 comments