After little more than two years of development the release of the new version of the Mumble platform 1.4 was announced, which is focused on creating voice chats that provide low latency and high voice quality.
Unlike centralized services, Mumble allows you to store user data on your own servers and fully control how it works of the infrastructure, if necessary, by connecting additional controller scripts, to write that a special API based on the Ice and GRPC protocols is available.
In particular, you can use existing user bases for authentication or connect sound bots that can, for example, play music. It is possible to manage the server through a web interface. Users can search for friends on different servers.
Main new features of Mumble 1.4
In this new version it is highlighted that implemented the ability to develop general purpose plugins that can be installed and updated independently of the main application. Unlike the previously provided built-in plugins, the new mechanism can be used to implement arbitrary additions and is not limited to means of extracting player location information to implement positional sound.
Another notable change is that added a full search dialog for users and channels available on the server. The dialog can be invoked using the Ctrl+F combination or via the menu. Both mask searches and regular expressions are supported.
We can also find that added a channel listening mode which allows the user to listen to all the sounds that the members of the channel listen to, but without being directly connected to the channel.
At the same time, listening users are reflected in the channel member listl, but they are marked with a special icon (only in new versions, in older clients such users are not displayed). The mode is unidirectional, that is, if the listening user wants to talk, they must connect to the channel, in addition to the fact that ACLs and configurations have been provided for channel administrators to disable connections in listening mode.
In addition to this, it is also noted that added TalkingUI interface, which allows to understand who is speaking at the moment. The interface provides a popup with a list of currently speaking users, which is similar to the tooltip in game mode, but is designed for everyday use by non-gamers.
have been added interface access restriction flags, which makes it possible to understand whether or not the user can connect to the channel (for example, if the channel only allows login with a password or is linked to a specific group on the server).
Text messages support Markdown markup, which, for example, can be used to send lists, code snippets, quotes to a chat, highlighting bold or italic text, and styling links.
Added the ability to play stereo audio, which allows the server to send a stereo audio stream that the client will not convert to mono. This feature can be used, for example, to create music bots. Sending sound from the official client is still only possible in mono mode.
On the other hand, it is also noted that added the ability to assign nicknames to users, which makes it possible to attach a more descriptive name to users who abuse long names or change their name frequently.
Of the Other changes that stand out:
- The server now has the ability to send a welcome text in broadcast mode using the Ice protocol.
- Added support for reflecting in the ACL record and all changes in groups.
- Added separate ACLs to control reset of comments and avatars.
- By default, spaces are allowed in usernames.
- Reduced CPU load by enabling TCP_NODELAY by default.
Added plugins to support positional audio in Among Us and random games based on the Source engine. - Updated addons for Call of Duty 2 and GTA V games.
- The Opus audio codec has been updated to version 1.3.1.
- Removed support for Qt4, DirectSound, and CELT 0.11.0.
If you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details In the following link.
How to install Mumble 1.4 on Ubuntu and derivatives?
This new version of the Mumble platform can be installed on your distro by following the instructions that we share below.
To perform the installation we must add the repository from the application to our system, we can do this opening a terminal (you can do it with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + T) and in it they will execute the following command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mumble/release -y sudo apt-get update
Once the repository has been added, you can install the application with the following command:
sudo apt install mumble
Another method of installation is with the help of the packages of flat pack, it is only enough to have the added support and in a terminal type the following command:
flatpak install flathub info.mumble.Mumble
