First, sorry if I posted this in the wrong thread.

Due to Covid 19 the local AL DnD game I used to attend is still on hold, and I really miss roleplaying by now. I have heard of online DnD play (not talking about the computer game), but never tried it. In case you do play online, what hardware and software do you use? Any suggestions or advice to a total beginner on online DnD gaming? Is there any good guides you can point me towards?

My group plays using Roll20. It's a little intimidating when you first open it up, but if you watch a few tutorials you'll get used to it. I like that it does a lot of the math for you... you can drag and drop spells onto your character sheet, then just click and the game will do the math for it (like, say, with sleep, which always involves a lot of dice rolled). I've heard that Foundry is basically Roll20 but with more features, but I just have more experience with Roll20 and all my friends are used to it as well.

Our long term group just shifted to using Discord for voice and video chat, with the Avrae bot for dice rolling.  Some, but not all, of us use the D&D Beyond character sheet integration.  We use a free whiteboard site (like https://r8.whiteboardfox.com/) to draw maps and stuff.  You don't get the features that a VTT like Roll20 or Foundry gives, but there's next to no learning curve.  Closer to the pencil and paper experience.  Of course you need to have friends to play with.

I've been experimenting with Roll20, but most of us just want to play and aren't interested in learning the mechanics.

So if i was going to put together an online campaign, I think I would use discord for most stuff (voice and video communication), DnDBeyond for campaign and character reference, and either Foundry or World Anvil(?) for VTT... I definitely wouldn't rely on one source for everything though, the closest you get there is roll20 but it's not great for *everything*.

tldr Everything MiddleAgedNoob said.

Edit: On a more personal experience level, I've taken to a wonderful westmarches style discord server. I can rp when I want, and random encounters happen whenever, and i LOVE IT

The group I'm in uses Roll20 (for the maps and such), linked to each of our own DNDBeyond accounts (for the character sheets and dice rolls), and for voice and facetime we use Zoom. It works really really well. A couple people get a bit laggy now and then because maybe their devices have trouble running all three programs at once.

Personally, I would prefer playing at a table with a paper character sheet. But until Ye Merry Plague Times are over, this setup is the next best thing out there. 

Me and my friends use Google Meet for our D&D sessions. We don't really need a VTT, since we mostly run Theater of the Mind. Whenever I need to display a map, I just screen-share it. It's also fun because I can change my background depending on where the party is.

Same as Anzio, my group plays on roll20, with DNDBeyond support, but uses zoom for talking to/seeing each other.