I got laid off and needed something to do.
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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Mostly gaming. I self-host three different game servers (Palworld, Minecraft and Terraria on occasion) and will be adding a TeamSpeak server soon to replace discord. Is it the best? Prolly not, but audio chat is all we really use Discord for anyway so we don't need the full feature stack.
I've been trying to get the boys off discord for years, and am finally getting some traction with the whole age verification thing. Sticking point is they want screen sharing, any ideas?
Teamspeak 6 is in beta right now, but does have screen sharing. I don't know how stable everything is atm, but might be worth looking into and keeping an eye on.
If the pricing model remains the same, we can expect TS6 to have a free self-hostable server for up to 32 users (which is the beta licensing right now).
I don't know of any FOSS programs that have it, but I'm sure you can ask around and find one.
Yeah, in the asking around/trying stuff out phase now. https://movim.eu/ is the frontrunner, TS6 and a bunch of Element Call improvements for Matrix are apparently just around the corner. Matrix is my best guess for where things are headed and the smart move would be waiting for it to mature juuust a little, but I want to act while I've got their attention and that means having something up and running by the time Discord asks them for an id
I'm not in a tech field now, but I used to be. I jumped ship when everything started moving to 'cloud based' because I don't trust anything I can't kick when it breaks.
Lack of trust, for the most part. I've been screwed over a few too many times for me to rely entirely on someone else. Whether it's Audible claiming I never bought an audiobook I knew damned good and well I did buy or seeing someone else getting their life made difficult by Google, Apple or Microsoft, or "friends" and family making life difficult, I've learned the hard way over the years I can't rely fully on anything not under my control.
Besides privacy also moral reasons, using megacorps services means giving them money/power/data which in turn helps them do all the direct & indirect evils they do & influence (from exploiting monopolies & influencing demand side, to lobbying for lower taxes & legislature to keep/increase their monopoly, even just blankly supporting fascists political options bcs that has a great chance to enrich their shareholder value regardless of all the other effects, etc).
You know, try to leave a better place than you got it & whatnot.
I couldn't think about leaving my personal data to the Big Tech...
Linux initially, giving way for me to see that the best alternatives to me are generally the ones I control.
And considering geopolitics, where I can see how dangerous a well-positioned spy/saboteur/paid actor can be, my next self host project is some ActivityPub social media, at least as an one-user instance since I don't want to act as a company yet, so I have control of where I'm posting from too.