[Galene] Galène for bigger meeting (10-15 people) - problems and UX questions

[Galene] Galène for bigger meeting (10-15 people) - problems and UX questions

[Valent Turković]

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Hello everyone,

I am testing Galène on my own server with the Docker image. The install works fine, technically Galène works without problem.

I tested it quite wide - with my two phones, laptop on Linux and desktop on Windows, also iPhone and iPad. Browsers: Firefox on Linux, Brave on Windows. So really many different platforms and browsers.

First I tested with some colleagues who are more technical, and it went ok. Maybe one person had audio problem, but that was some strange Android in a bus, so maybe it was the internet.

But yesterday I had one big fail for a meeting of around 10-15 people. I gave them the link to my test server. First thing, when they came to the login window, they were confused because there is username AND password field, even it is a test room that does not need password. This confused them right away. So I commented out the password field in the UI, to have only login field, and this helped.

But still many of them had technical problems - for some the audio did not work, some had glitches. Here is some direct feedback from the people (it is honest, maybe sometimes it hurts, but it is the truth):
- Mirek: "We needed a 'raise hand' button and didn't find one, otherwise everything worked afaik"
- DJ Stern: "I didn't hear or see anyone" and "it was visually glitching out between the text chat and attendees view"
- Patrik: "oyea when dj joined chat window was popping up and closing kinda"
- Daya: "I tried all three options numerous times as kept getting kicked out but it seemed to randomly work on all three at times"

In the end the people gave up on Galène and we switched to Google Meet - even it was me who is pushing that we use Galène, so for me this is not nice.

My feeling is there is quite a lot of UI/UX problems here. For example, by default it asks "what you want - microphone, or microphone + camera". My guess is that many people who had problems did not understand what this means, and they left it on default "none", and that is why their audio did not work.

Because of this I would even suggest that by default this question is not asked - hide it under some "advanced" button, or put it somewhere after login. I don't really understand why someone would log in to a room as chat only. Let the camera and microphone be off by default, but the browser must have the permissions, because otherwise for a big number of people Galène is useless - it will make problems and they simply will not use it.

So my question: who used Galène in such situation, with 10-15 people, and what problems did you have? Because clearly there are still some bugs that are not solved.

Thanks,
Valent

--
Valent

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[Galene] Re: Galène for bigger meeting (10-15 people) - problems and UX questions

[Tim Panton]

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With 10 or 15 people you are going to need pretty good connectivity to the server for it to work. A minimum of 100Mbit/s uplink. 

Did you have that ?

I use the bare metal install for a 6-8 person group on a self hosted old server with a 100mbit uplink and it works ok, but I have also decreased the default video quality to low.
(Which is enough for a big group unless you are screen sharing).

Our experience in the past is that Galène does not really like being on an asymmetric connection with more downlink than uplink bitrate, somehow the bandwidth estimation gets confused. 

Tim.

> On 16 Jul 2026, at 15:19, Valent Turković <valent@meshpointone.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I am testing Galène on my own server with the Docker image. The install works fine, technically Galène works without problem.
> 
> I tested it quite wide - with my two phones, laptop on Linux and desktop on Windows, also iPhone and iPad. Browsers: Firefox on Linux, Brave on Windows. So really many different platforms and browsers.
> 
> First I tested with some colleagues who are more technical, and it went ok. Maybe one person had audio problem, but that was some strange Android in a bus, so maybe it was the internet.
> 
> But yesterday I had one big fail for a meeting of around 10-15 people. I gave them the link to my test server. First thing, when they came to the login window, they were confused because there is username AND password field, even it is a test room that does not need password. This confused them right away. So I commented out the password field in the UI, to have only login field, and this helped.
> 
> But still many of them had technical problems - for some the audio did not work, some had glitches. Here is some direct feedback from the people (it is honest, maybe sometimes it hurts, but it is the truth):
> - Mirek: "We needed a 'raise hand' button and didn't find one, otherwise everything worked afaik"
> - DJ Stern: "I didn't hear or see anyone" and "it was visually glitching out between the text chat and attendees view"
> - Patrik: "oyea when dj joined chat window was popping up and closing kinda"
> - Daya: "I tried all three options numerous times as kept getting kicked out but it seemed to randomly work on all three at times"
> 
> In the end the people gave up on Galène and we switched to Google Meet - even it was me who is pushing that we use Galène, so for me this is not nice.
> 
> My feeling is there is quite a lot of UI/UX problems here. For example, by default it asks "what you want - microphone, or microphone + camera". My guess is that many people who had problems did not understand what this means, and they left it on default "none", and that is why their audio did not work.
> 
> Because of this I would even suggest that by default this question is not asked - hide it under some "advanced" button, or put it somewhere after login. I don't really understand why someone would log in to a room as chat only. Let the camera and microphone be off by default, but the browser must have the permissions, because otherwise for a big number of people Galène is useless - it will make problems and they simply will not use it.
> 
> So my question: who used Galène in such situation, with 10-15 people, and what problems did you have? Because clearly there are still some bugs that are not solved.
> 
> Thanks,
> Valent
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> 
> Valent Turković
> CEO
> valent@meshpointone.com <mailto:valent@meshpointone.com>
> www.meshpointone.com <http://www.meshpointone.com/>_______________________________________________
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[Galene] Re: Galène for bigger meeting (10-15 people) - problems and UX questions

[err404]

I am not expert, so take my message with no waranties.

the audio or video issues can append when using ipv4 and filtered ports.
you can connect, but you will not hear or see anything, or you can hear and see people but they can't see or hear you...
a solution for that is using a TURN relay server,

another solution is using ipv6 only, so by default you will have no ports filtered.

see you

[Galene] Re: Galène for bigger meeting (10-15 people) - problems and UX questions

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

Hi Valent,

> I am testing Galène on my own server with the Docker image. The install works
> fine, technically Galène works without problem.

Are you running Galene on bare hardware, or inside a Docker container?
Since you still haven't described how you worked around the limitations of
Docker's networking setup, there's not much we can help with if it's the
latter.

> But still many of them had technical problems - for some the audio did not
> work, some had glitches.

Did you have enough throughput on the server to handle all of the traffic?
Since Galene was optimised for lectures with many students, Galene is pretty
good at dealing with congestion in the server->client direction, but deals
poorly with congestion in the client->server direction: we expect the
lecturer to have a good connection, or, if they do not, to limit
throughput using the « Send » side menu.

> - Mirek: "We needed a 'raise hand' button and didn't find one, otherwise
> everything worked afaik"

Yep, the Raise Hand button is hidden in the menu.  I remember that you
volunteered to fix that.

> - DJ Stern: "I didn't hear or see anyone"

That looks like Firefox bug 2033783:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2033783.  Please ask them to
upgrade their browser.

(I'm starting to be seriously p*ssed off with the bugs in Firefox's
implementation of WebRTC, I'm really tempted to add a warning that Firefox
is not supported.)

> "it was visually glitching out between the text chat and attendees view"

> My feeling is there is quite a lot of UI/UX problems here. For example, by
> default it asks "what you want - microphone, or microphone + camera". My guess
> is that many people who had problems did not understand what this means, and
> they left it on default "none", and that is why their audio did not work.

That's a deliberate design choice.  It is my opinion that a normal human
being do not want to walk into a meeting with their camera switched on:
they want to lurk for a while before they switch their camera on.  At
least, that's my experience with students.

After a lot of discussions, I have agreed to add the login menu for those
people who really want to show their face straight away, but the expected
UX is that you come in, lurk for a while, then hit « Present ».

> I don't really understand why someone would log in to a room as chat only.

Because you want to listen to the discussion for a while before you
participate?  Or perhaps because it's a lecture and you're a student who
will only turn on their camera when they have a question to ask?

> Let the camera and microphone be off by default, but the browser must
> have the permissions, because otherwise for a big number of people
> Galène is useless - it will make problems and they simply will not use it.

I'm not sure.  Should we be asking for permissions even for those users
who only intend to listen to the lecture?

> So my question: who used Galène in such situation, with 10-15 people, and what
> problems did you have?

For 10 people, the server is receiving 10 flows, and sending 90 flows (9
flows to 10 people).  At 700kbit/s for each flow, that's over 7Mbit/s down
and 60Mbit/s up from the point of view of the server.  Is your
connectivity in that ballpark?

-- Juliusz