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Discord gets improvements for video on Linux PCs and Steam Deck (www.gamingonlinux.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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The developer team at Discord released a new engineering blog post yesterday (December 8th) detailing lots of fixes, along with some Linux improvements. As one of the most popular chat apps in the world, it's good to see their support of Linux continue to get better over time.

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[–] 30 points 11 months ago* (4 children)

That's great and all but Discord is still on my short list of services to ditch.AND FFS DISCORD, I DO NOT WANT NITRO, I JUST WANT TO TALK TO MY FRIENDS!!

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    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).

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    • [–] 25 points 11 months ago (30 children)

    Why are we saying Linux PCs AND steam deck? The steam deck is just a Linux PC. Unless custom work was done for it?

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  • [–] 25 points 11 months ago* (25 children)

    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.

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  • [+] -6 points 11 months ago (24 children)

    No, it's a Linux PC. You just never leave steam big picture mode if you're basic.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago* (22 children)

    So is any Android phone in such case. Form factor matters.
    The Deck is a Linux handheld, that can be converted to a Linux PC depending on the accessories used. But by itself, with no accessories whatsoever, good luck using it as a PC.
    A laptop can be considered as a PC, as it has all the peripheral integrated into his chassis, a desktop too (as it cannot be used without peripherals, they can be counted as part of it), but a Deck primary use is handheld gaming, not personal computing. Its included peripherals cannot allow it use as such.

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  • [–] -3 points 11 months ago (21 children)

    It's... Not a desktop?

    It is a personal computer, it runs Linux, I recognize KDE, I can fuck around in terminal. In what ways is it not a personal computer? I don't understand.

    Also, are you a llm from like 2021?

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago* (20 children)

    Also, are you a llm from like 2021?

    I'm a human with an opinion you may not share, for whom English is not his primary language. So grammatical error are to be expected. Now if you can come down of your high horse and not assume anyone with whom you do not agree is a LLM, that'd be great.

    It is a personal computer, it runs Linux, I recognize KDE, I can fuck around in terminal. In what ways is it not a personal computer? I don’t understand.

    Try to do a spreadsheet on the deck without any accessory. It is possible, but very fastidious. It isn't an hardware made to do personal computing (aka, a PC), it is an hardware to play game.
    A PC isn't just a software, it is also a hardware specifically made to allow various computing tasks. Calculus, graphical work of various kinds, sometimes games (which have to adapt to peripherals that weren't made for games in mind).
    A Deck is made for games first, and the various other task you may want to do have to work around its limitation. From my point of view, this cannot be called a PC.
    But that's my opinion, I won't force anyone else to agree with me, or call them a LLM out of spite.

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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I mean, try to do a spreadsheet on a PC without any accessories. You can't, because there's no monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc... All accessories. By this logic, only laptops can really be called PCs.

    Replace any desktop tower with a Steam Deck and you'll find it's perfectly capable of doing the same job.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    A desktop computer cannot be used without peripheral (unless you use it as a server). They where separated from the chassis for flexibility sake, not because they were optional.
    There was a time where everything was integrated into the chassis, screen included. Those were hefty beasts, loud, and hard to maintain, because when a peripheral broke, you had to service the whole unit instead of swapping the keyboard to a new one.

    As for the Deck, you have everything you need for its intended use, no peripheral needed. Of course, you can add some to make it work like a PC, but in such case, is it still only a Deck ?

    We could argue for ages around that, but I think it boils down to philosophy. Some prefers maximalist definition, other prefer minimalist definition. I'm obviously of the later school, and you of the former.
    So, how about we agree to have different opinions on the matter, and go on our respective way, instead of throwing oil on the fire of a sterile debate ?

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  • [–] -4 points 11 months ago (17 children)

    Think this might be a language issue then.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (16 children)

    Bad form, dude. Tisk.

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  • [–] -3 points 11 months ago (15 children)

    I can usually tell 'second language' use patterns.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (14 children)

    Still not a valid argument in this case. It's basically an ad hominem, or on that level of argumentation.

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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (13 children)

    It was a weird pattern. I grew up talking to second language speakers as often as first.

    Maybe it's an llm bullshitting us, maybe they learned in some weird way like 'Mandarin, Python, English'. Maybe your mom is not a valid argument? Who can say?

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (12 children)

    Maybe your mom is not a valid argument?

    Are you actively trying to pick fights now?

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago (11 children)

    Oh, so your mom is a valid argument? I need to explore the ramifications of this.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (10 children)

    You're acting like an obnoxious teen. We try to be nice to each other on Lemmy, could you try to play along? Makes for a nicer environment. Thanks.

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    Your mom?

    Testing this out. Lemme know if I'm doing it wrong. First comment since finding out.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (8 children)

    You can usually file people into two crowds when pointing out to them that they're not behaving very nicely.

    You've got your A crowd, where they go "Ah shit, you're right, mb. Just having a little banter, I'm sorry."

    Then you've got your B crowd which consists of people who when confronted in a calm and nice manner will just double down on being an asshole. I guess because of weak and fragile ego?

    It's never too late to disassociate yourself from the wrong crowd, buddy.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    So I'm not using it properly? Can you show me proper use in a sentence?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (6 children)

    Just stop.

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Why?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (4 children)

    Will you look back at yourself in decades' time and you're gonna be like, "yeah, I'm proud of how I acted during that week"?

    Is this the type of person you aim to be? This is your ambition in life? 😐

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    look back on this week

    Actually yeah. I've been pretty awesome this week. I hope it doesn't stand out that much, but it's a pretty solid normal.

    is this who you want to be?

    And yes, sorta. Being a petty bitch on the internet is kind of what I aspire to. I dream of a world where I, sucking no more than I do now, am the absolute worst piece of shit anyone can imagine. That world would be fucking amazing.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    You're on the wrong platform then. Maybe go back to Reddit where this is more the norm? You'll be among peers.

    Before I block you forever with an... appropriate user tag, I just have one question:

    Why is this something you aspire to be?

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    I suppose it shall remain forever a mystery. Unless you read the comment you're replying to. But otherwise? Mystery.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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    • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I would ditch Discord, but the TMBW server is just so darn good and I can't leave that behind. Maybe I could convince them to set up a Matrix bridge (they already self-host MediaWiki), but then they'd probably end up basically doing this just for me.

    My university's Linux User's Group is on Discord, but they have it bridged with a Matrix server; due to the current state of things in the US, they only allow political discussion in certain encrypted channels that are exclusive to the Matrix server.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    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.

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    • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Alternatively, use Vesktop. It has telemetry removed. And it's actually developed with Linux in mind.

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    • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Audio on chat is busted on linux since last update but sure

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    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.

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    • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    they can do all that but they can't make a simple apt repository?

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    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.

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    • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (17 children)

    Please don't install this shit on your computer

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  • [–] 23 points 11 months ago (11 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago

    Revolt rebranded as Stoat and does have voice chat with discord-style hotseat channels available in beta. I still wouldn't recommend it yet due to client bugs, but it's getting there.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    If you are using PC, Check out Element. It does utilize Matrix, but that gives you the ability to self host if you wish. Voice and video works well enough for me and my friends to stream to the room and was a suitable replacement for Discord.

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    Today I deleted my Discord account, I was using it in Firefox or Webcord wrapper. I can't imagine installing this type of software on my computer. It's scanning your computer by default to check what programs are you using or what games are you playing and it's properiaty, commercial app.

    You never know how the data they collect about you will be used. It's a great tool for censorship, and Discord has good communication with the authorities. Despite this, they still have no problem with violence in the form of groups encouraging teenagers to self-harm, Nazis, and gore or pornographic content of a pedophilic or zoophilic nature. Unfortunately, as a minor, I came across a lot of this type of content there completely by accident. A large, centralized, unencrypted messenger allows for accurate tracking or complete destruction of a user's history. This is important for political oppression, falsification, and evidence gathering.

    Most people are too lazy to change anything in their lives, even their messenger, out of concern for their privacy and security. And there are alternatives, but they won't even be able to emerge because of this majority. It's not that all these messengers are free and we all pay dearly for them, but not with our own money. Money is not as valuable as power and the right to one's identity.

    If Matrix had as much money as Discord (where there are much better freedom-oriented alternatives to Discord), it would probably allow for the same simplicity as Discord. Unfortunately, ethical activity plays a secondary role for us. It's the same with clothing—it's easier to get clothes that are cheaply made in poor countries by exploiting children than clothes that are made locally with respect for workers' rights.

    I am not providing alternatives, because if someone does not understand this and is too lazy to look for them themselves, they should not clutter up spaces where valuable people gather.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    It’s scanning your computer by default to check what programs are you using or what games are you playing

    This is exactly why I like Discord.

    If I'm online and not playing a game, I want my friends to see that I'm online so they can message me.

    If I'm playing a game, I want my friends to know I am playing that game.

    If it's a multiplayer game, they can join in.

    If it's a single player campaign focused game, they know I won't be keen to play a multiplayer game right now, but they can still message me if something big and spontaneous is happening.

    If I don't want to be contacted at all, I close discord.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Thats what steam is for.

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  • [–] -4 points 11 months ago

    Why do you think 'don't install this shit on your computer' is a concern?

    And I guess if you can't fuck with matrix, idk; fucking do without? Might just be there's no safe easy-for-idiots way to get the thing you want right now. Shit happens.

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    In my country literally everyone still uses Facebook and Messenger for that simple reason: everyone they know uses it.

    I've always been against Discord and I miss the Mumble+IRC days, but Discord is just the default now and it's not going away

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Unfortunately it's a necessary evil if you want voice and video chat. I think people and companies that use it professionally for customer support and similar are making a terrible choice. If there were a competing product that was as simple to setup and had even the most basic voice and chat features without the extra discord bloat, I'd jump ship, but that's not really an option right now.

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    • 27 comments in c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz view that post
    [–] 40 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    This is in part because of electron.

    Even Steam is a chromium app. 😥

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    • [–] 24 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    @Fubarberry Man oh man do you fucking love to see #Linux finally getting official recognition from large companies. Thank the fuck outta you, #Valve and the #SteamDeck

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    • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    Does screen-sharing with audio work yet?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    It has for some time now, but the quality is still hit or miss. Some days I get perfect streaming, other days its either a garbled mess or it can't capture at all.

    Webcam has always worked but nobody I know uses that.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    It works and has worked for a while. Application specific sharing for audio is an oddity though, since it can't seem to isolate and you get all desktop audio excluding discord

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    • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    Last month I started hosting a TeamSpeak 6 server, and it's been great.

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    [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    Matrix has its prime time to shine. They could be rapidly adding parity and making it a great decentralized alternative.

    It seems however they are busy not updating element x, breaking signing keys, splitting every existing service they have into 2, and not writing docs

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    [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    He better if it went away.

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    [–] 0 points 11 months ago (10 children)

    The only way for discord to improve on linux would be if they stopped releasing it entirely

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    No client would be much worse than a client lacking feature parity. There are alternative Discord clients like Vesktop if you don't like the official one.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (8 children)

    Discord is surveillance capitalism trash that cant die of enshittification soon enough.

    Discord is spyware

    Matrix, xmpp, mumble, there are cointless alternatives for every use case that are better options.

    You can 1:1 mirror discord guilds on matrix or rocket chat. Mumble has been doing voice chat since before discord ever existed. Obs and rustdesk can do screen sharing much better then discord.

    But sure, continue to lick that corporate boot more and tell me about how nothing can come close to the goodness of discord and all the normies are too dumb to ever use anything else.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I'm not endorsing Discord. All I was saying is that it is better to have a Linux client available for those who want to use it than not. To encourage the widest switch to Linux, commonly used software must be available on the platform.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    The entire internet would be a whole lot better if the kind of information and help people currently turn to discord for was still primarily done on public web forums like it was from practically the dawn of the internet up until discord and other corporate trash just all of a sudden be came "essential" for everyone. Discord is actively harming our ability to archive and share data and they are profiting massively from it, it is objectively bad for the internet and bad for open source.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    I don't disagree. The way I use discord and they way it works best is for small communities, like my guild where we can use it as a cross-game communication.

    It really does suck for things like reference information and asking questions. Not only because it isn't publicly available, but just because finding that information within the platform itself is difficult.

    I find it very frustrating that Nobara Linux uses Discord for support. I'm sure I could have used an answer that someone else asked previously, that is really difficult to find.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Do you have any guides or resources to using OBS as a screen share tool? I tried in the past to use it as a platform agnostic solution, but ran into a lot of problems that would prevent my friends from using it. Virtual cam didn't provide audio, and using input mixing to combine mic + isolated application audio(already a multi step process in OBS per app) involves a lot of tech knowledge that is beyond what the end-user demographic of discord is willing to put up with. I also tried using vdo ninja as a P2P shareable link for video group conferences, but couldn't get the webRTC links to work with direct streams from OBS.

    I despise Discord and have been having success with moving close friends to more private IM apps, but so far, nothing has come close to the effortless ease of discord group calls with screen sharing. Most competing social screen share apps don't even have audio support, and the ones that do either don't have audio isolation, or their implementation of it is broken.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    Can you give me more details about what you're trying to screenshare, like games, videos, slidshows? I mainly use OBS to stream to peertube which can itself host a chat or be integrated with other chats, but if you are looking for something more like a group video call jistsi might be more in line with what you want.

    Send me a DM with more info and ill try to figure out what options might work for ya. My contact info is also on my lemmy profile.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    Its usually games, though its generally "whatever we are doing at the time" with trusted, long distance friends. Its not something I would want to share over publicly accessible URLs. And it almost always involve varied and fast moving visuals, so basic software encoding is not acceptable.

    I have tried jitsi before. It does not use hardware accelerated codecs or provide audio isolation for applications. I can't imagine using its screen share for anything more demanding than a slide show presentation.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    Currently best option might be vdo.ninja, or if you have multiple people wanting to game on the same shared screen sunshine/moonlight is specifically for gaming can handle shared sessions.

    I do hope jitsi gets better encoding options in the future because its really the easiest to use

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    • [–] 0 points 11 months ago
    • Resolved an issue that caused Linux clients to display two titlebars.

    And we still fall into stupid issues like this thanks to GNOME bias towards CSDs

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    [–] 0 points 11 months ago

    screen sharing still lags my games out, making it unusable

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