Alt Forums

I discovered today that there’s a phpBB fork that was federated and a community is using the software. Looks like I’ve got another forum to join haha. It sucks that lemmybb isn’t being maintained anymore though… I had no clue someone managed to make edits to phpBB to make it federated, there’s only a few forum software that are federated. Anyways here’s the link to RetroLemmy.

https://forum.retrolemmy.com/

While browsing Reddit yesterday I came across a post in Reddit Alternatives for a new modern Imageboard. Everiot is a European based Imageboard but it looks like the staff uses AI moderation. I don’t think I’d join this one, I don’t really care for imageboards to begin with and if they’re using AI moderation I’m sure many posts get flagged as spam even if it’s not. Though if you like imageboards you might like this one so I decided to share it here.

https://everiot.org/

This is just a tribute to what I think it was one of the most decent alternative video platforms ever existed.

For those who never knew about it or never got to use it, it was basically a video platform but with some cool features from classic YouTube, such as full channel customization (colors, backgrounds, GIFs, etc) combined with a modern design, as well as video responses and friends system.

It was created by Jan, developer of the most known “old YouTube” clones VidLii and BitView (which he no longer owns) and launched around 2018. Was used to be popular during 2019 back when YouTube announced COPPA and everyone back then thought it was “the end of YouTube” (and here we still are…).

From what little I remember, long before the platform shut down around 2020, there was a time when the “uploader” was down for maintenance for more than two months and no one could upload any new content to the site (except people who had scheduled videos much before the maintenance), until, just days after they fixed it, the developers received a DMCA takedown that would take down one of the project’s servers and the website temporarily closed.
Some time later, the project was handed over to new owners, who began asking for donations on Patreon until, for some reason, they came to the conclusion that maintaining a video site of such size was becoming too expensive for them, so they finally decided to shut down the website for good in 2021, eradicating all user-uploaded content in the process.
They have been announcing over the years (and even recently in 2025 IIRC) that they will host an archive containing all user content, but so far they haven't done so.

RIP

Just a place to tell everyone what's going through your mind right now. I'm thinking about making a new video for my Youtube channel. So ideas on how I'm going to make this next video are flowing through my mind. Also I'm thinking of places where I can promote the community at that I haven't done so! :)

On August 24, 2026, maintainer of Nitter project (and some related instances) received a C&D from X Corp., making the main developer to close the main instance and archiving the GitHub repo, as well as other related services like TwitterWebView.com, closing today on August 28.

Sad to see this happen. I refuse to make an account (which also requires now using their mobile app) to that awful and shitty platform just to see a single post or the profile of someone (and the main reason why most people like me have been using Nitter as visiting X as guest is now impossible). This is why people should also (cross)post their content on other sites or “open” platforms like Mastodon instead of that fucking boring walled garden.

Anyway, the few Nitter instances I've seen that are still active at this moment are these:

• nitter.kareem.one

• goyimx.com

• shitter.thepixora.com

• nitter.space

Hope the evil X doesn’t come after them.

And yeah I know you can also self-host Nitter but it would be a PITA to find a working fork and IIRC it now requires using an existent Twitter account for being used as “crawler”.

If you’re looking to get away from Adobe products and want a free, powerful video editor then look no further! DaVinci Resolve is the editor I use when I need to edit videos for my various accounts on different video platform sites. I use it whenever I use Windows, I use another editor on Linux. I’m honestly surprised I didn’t make a topic for this software yet. :V There is a paid version of the software btw, if you want to pay for it.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

If you were around in the early days of the internet you probably remember Usenet groups. RootBadger is a modern approach to Usenet groups that I just found out about today. I figured I would share this platform with everyone here. :)

https://rootbadger.com/

Has anyone here used Signal before? It’s been around longer than Discord has, and I think it’s similar to Whatsapp but it’s not owned by a big corporation like Whatsapp is. There’s no trackers, and no ads. I don’t really have a need for a program like this personally so I don’t think I would use it but I am curious to see if anyone is using it here.

https://signal.org/

Chinese video platform which I personally know and I sometimes visit for otoMADs. They announced a few weeks ago that they have plans to expand globally, releasing their apps for Android and iOS for all countries and also making “programs” for content creators.

I personally don’t trust on it and more being from China (you know what I mean).

While browsing Facebook the other day I came across an article shared on a page. Apparently there's talks about bringing back MySpace. It was my favorite social media platform since you could customize your own pages to your liking, something that no mainstream social media allows for users to do now. If it comes back I hope it won't be a carbon copy of other platforms like Digg ended up being.

https://tech.yahoo.com/social-media/articles/myspace-owners-plan-comeback-iconic-173025561.html

This is only for people that miss those "old-school" gaming social/chat applications like Ventrillo, GameSpy Arcade and so.

https://xf1re.com/

Xf1re is a reverse-engineered project of the old Xfire program which closed in 2015 (I only managed to use it once back when I used to play HaloCE so much =/). It's mainly focused on gaming and it's based on the latest old version of the original Xfire client so don't expect fancy and modern details. It works similar to Steam but isn't a game store but a "social" gaming platform.

It allows you to customize your web profile, sync some of your installed games, record and upload videos and screenshots, save and query favorite gameservers and so on.

Some details if you're going to register:

1. If your password characters is longer than 12 it will be truncated to their maximum specified characters without any warning (isn't even mentioned on the signup page).

2. Seems like you cannot delete posted comments on screenshots/videos and similar.

If you're looking for a semi beginner Debian based Linux distro, look no further! Ubuntu is a pretty beginner friendly OS, there might be some instances where you'll need to use the terminal to install things but it's not too complex. It's one of the oldest Linux distros that's still actively being worked on too. Are you rocking Ubuntu? I currently have it installed on a external SSD and I dual boot with Windows 11 and Ubuntu. If I could I would make the full switch to Ubuntu, but there are programs that I use that will not work under Ubuntu. Anyways if you're looking to switch to Linux give Ubuntu a try! Note: Ubuntu is also used for hosting. The link below is for a desktop environment, not a hosting one!
https://ubuntu.com/desktop

Did you ever get a chance to use Red Hat Linux back in the day? It was a commercial open source version of Linux with the first stable release was on my fifth birthday ironically enough in 1995 but was discontinued in 2004. The OS was merged with Fedora Linux in 2003.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Linux

I know we've got a thread for FreeBSD but I figured I would create one for OpenBSD as well. This operating system is better suited for lower end tech such as your router where security is a higher priority than user friendly GUIs. If I had to pick to use FreeBSD or OpenBSD, I would definitely choose FreeBSD but honestly I still prefer Linux. Have you ever messed with OpenBSD before? I love how simple their logo looks and the pufferfish looks smug af too haha.

https://www.openbsd.org/

This is a modern forum software that can be installed on shared hosting! Most modern forum platforms like NodeBB and Discourse need to be installed on a VPS since they require Docker to function, but this one is written in php. Though the author did use AI, so this was vibe coded. That may be a deal breaker for some people. I haven't tried this software yet, but I've thought about giving it a try. I'll drop a link for the community so you can see what it looks like from a guest point of view.

https://community.convoro.co/

I figured I would start creating threads based around general discussions of alternative platforms, OS, etc. instead of just making threads listing other platforms that exist. So what made you decide that you wanted to start using alternative platforms? Were you tired of the moderation on the more popular platforms, tired of the interface or just wanted to try something new? I go down these rabbit holes where I want to try new things out and that's how I joined Lemmy. I use Root more than Discord because I don't like the direction that Discord is taking when it comes to ID checks. Overall I just prefer forums to anything though, and forums are considered alternative platforms at this point too!

What do you like? What do you drive (if not too personal)? What are reasons for your answers?

I think every forum should have one of these threads right? Anyways tell us what the weather is like in your neck of the woods currently! It's been storming here off and on today, and the tornado sirens have gone off four times already. We're still in a Tornado Watch until 9 PM CST, so there's a good chance I might hear the sirens go off again.

I just found out this on certain forum but it seems it's already too late to talk about it since their development appears to have been abandoned since May 2026 and their website no longer works. I don't know why or what happened but hey, at least the source code is still there on their GitHub.

Yeah, it's just another opensource "Discord clone" with a design similar to Revolt and Nerimity which seems like it was also designed to be selfhostable. I don't know if this is based on the code of such projects or made from scratch by looking at how the project's GitHub README is organized.

https://github.com/StrafeChat

Another one I found on certain forum. I can't believe it doesn't have much impact for what it offers.

Just another "Discord clone" similar to Sharkord and Fluxer. It's self-hostable, it has screen sharing, plugins/custom themes and even forums. I haven't tried it yet but it sounds interesting.
And yeah, just like Sharkord, this doesn't have a native client/app yet.

• https://chatto.run/

• https://chat.chatto.run/ (demo instance)

• https://www.hmans.dev/blog/chatto-is-open-source

PDFGear on Windows

and PDFGear Scan are much better than Adobe and completely free.

I am trying to get my employers to make the switch

Some people may have heard of this Microsoft Office competitor, especially if you've got any LInux experience under your belt. I believe this was formerly called Open Office, or it branched or something, but needless to say, the software is completely free, and is kept up to date. I use it instead of Microsoft Word and Excel, because it's fully compatible with MS stuff... and because I'm a cheap bas..... person-- I mentioned it's free! It's got a ton of functionality built in and so far I haven't had any need to install anything custom for it. Although, it does take a bit of getting used to, it's powerful enough for everything I do. There's also an Android app, I think, but I haven't really had a reason to use it, as I prefer to use Obsidian on my phone for my writing projects.

How long have you been into it? When did you discover it? What are reasons backing up whatever question given in this thread?

Hey I found Found this forum over on https://forumpromotion.net/directory/alt-forums.1322/

I joined because I want to encourage others to keep away from the ills of the social media on the masses. I much prefer communicating on forums. no tracking no algos. just me and the keyboard (and the dog)

I post on a few other forums and I was looking to add a few more to my bag.

I used to use MSN back when I was a teenager in the mid to late 00's. My best friend and I would hop on chat rooms and get people's screennames and talk to random people on MSN Messenger. Do you have fond memories using this chat client? I thought it was better than AIM and Yahoo Messenger.