Linux

There's really nothing else out there that can do all it does.

Man do I hate its UI though. Ick.

Using Matrix with Element instead?

If you aren't already using it, https://vencord.dev/ is a good Discord client mod that lets you get rid of some of the annoying features.

Might be against ToS, but so far I don't think people had any issues with it.

Another option (that I use when I don't need voice) is having your own Matrix server with Discord bridge. With double puppeting it can bridge both servers and DMs, and post in your name (without needing a bot on the server).

I've gotta look into this. I'm not really satisfied with Ripcord.

No global keybinds is a huge dealbreaker for me

A lot of custom work was done for it. Custom drivers, custom window manager, most of it upstreamed, if not all. It is not as different as an Android Phone, but I believe we can say it is not primarily a Linux PC, but rather an handheld that comes with an integrated Linux PC.

Everyone else in this comments section didn't read the article lmao, it's because they did steam deck specific fixes.

Go Live on Steamdeck is now faster with zero-copy encoding from Gamescope, making it possible to share the action with your friends without burning up your Steamdeck.

For the common Joe who has a Steam Deck and doesn't really care if it's powered by Linux or BSD or whatever

It may be a kind of Linux PC, but it’s not just a Linux PC. (Also not a fan of the American language…)

As far as I know you can do double puppeting with Matrix discord bridges, or whatever it is called.

As in "the bridge posts using your account, and not a bot". I have it set up on my own Matrix server, and I have servers and DMs bridged without issues.

Also, setting up a server with the ansible project is super easy, it's one of those rare cases where the ansible is robust, easy to use and actually doesn't break.

At least they provide an official Flatpak now.

Also, this isn't an official repository, but https://github.com/palfrey/discord-apt works pretty good for me. If you look at the source code for the fetching script and the Github Workflows, you can see that they just pull directly from the Discord website, and comparing file hashes further confirms it. I no longer use it since the official Flatpak is an option now, but it's still useful.

Not a solution but I found on steam is I couldn't get audio or mic to work. It would disconnect my audio devices when the app was open like pipewire was disconnecting. I then installed bazzite and it worked fine. This is from a PC not a steam deck though so steam os may be missing some drivers and such.

What's the alternative then? Because I can't really think of one that's as easy as discord to stand up a server for your friends and manage access to it, not to mention audio and video with screen sharing. I guess teamspeak 3, but holy shit is it convoluted and complicated to setup and manage for the everyday user. There's gilded but fuck that shit I'm not supporting the Roblox company. Revolt is another but there is no voice chat, no video chat, no screen sharing and it's filled with sketchy people. Matrix? Sure, but it's not easy to setup and manage at all. Discord works for what it needs to do and the features it has, if there's an alternative I'm more than willing to try it out but so far there's just nothing that comes close to the ease of use of discord. Discord is also supported on both Xbox and PlayStation, Sony even owns a minority stake in the company.

As the other said, what are the alternatives? All my gaming friends are on Discord. I tried to make them switch to another platform but they won't budge. I'm stuck with discord.

Why?/what are the alternatives?