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Ekiga?

It seems like this might be the best time to start promoting use of Ekiga to friends that are still back on Skype. I keep seeing less advantages to Skype over the alternatives with each update. What Microsoft considers enhancements seems to be far from what the rest of the community would consider to be providing value. Overtime, I expected Skype to be known as the client needed to interact with Xbox One users. Other than that, it really isn't that great of a communication client.

Everywhere I look I see businesses using Cisco, Tandberg and Polycom video conferencing and that means real H323 protocols and software. Of which there is NOTHING for linux.

Have you tried Ekiga (formerly GnomeMeeting)?

We dropped Skype due to the uncertain immediate future. We moved to SIP instead. There are several providers (not all eggs in one basket) with free SIP addresses and SIP to SIP calling. Many competing providers provide connection to PTSN at various rates and plans. Again, this is not a monopoly by anybody. Only the providers closly bundled with a cable company are enjoying monopoly rates. Almost anybody else has lower rates and more features.

Vontage gives you just a phone at home. Other SIP providers can provide DID (Direct inward dial), Multipresence (home and work locations, or home and cell phone, are extensions of each other), and many other features. Some providers provide service only so you can own your own device (BYOD) and not toss it in the trash when you change providers. Video phone is supported by many SIP providers.

To get started with a free SIP account and soft phone (Nothing to buy) look for free softphones that are not locked to a provider. I'm using Ekiga on Ubuntu with a headset on my netbook with no problems. There are other providers and versions for other operating systems, so pick one.
http://ekiga.org/

SIP is a protocol and works world wide. There are multiple providers if you need connectivity to POTS. For SIP to SIP, many providers provide free accounts. Google SIP for more information.

A free soft SIP phone for Windows and Ubuntu is Ekiga. They will provide a free SIP address if you want one. They also provide free confrence rooms. They can be public with anyone dialing in is joined or private where the first to dial can set a PIN and then others need to use the PIN to join. The room is released when everyone disconnects. I've had no problems using a confrence room. Most of them are empty most of the time as most people simply call user to user.
http://ekiga.org/
Their phone is not tied to their service. You can use it on Microsoft communicator if you wish using the conference protocol instead of SIP.

You don't have to use the same client on each platform. There are a couple of Mac clients that can Video Chat with Ekiga, and Windows actually comes with a compatible client (Windows Messenger):
http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Ekiga_Interoperability

Is Ekiga really unknown for most of the users?
It has Linux and Windows versions available.

I concur. Using Ekiga in a cross-platform setting for quite some time now, and it's doing just fine.

List of Open Source VOIP Software. Feel free to verify or modify the source to your liking. I think Ekiga sounds like a nice starting point, though I don't know how secure it is. It even supports calls to normal phones, so it seems I was wrong about that being a massive barrier.

Personally I don't care about trustworthiness or security in voice/video chat, since I've only ever used it for chatting to friends. For business use then being assured of confidentiality is more important of course.

In case you're not aware, Ekiga already exists and is a free-software SIP client implementation. See http://ekiga.org/ . At best this should be an extension for Ekiga, not an entirely new project.

-molo

Ekiga is a softphone client, not secure self-organized communication services.

This project aims to implement the entire VOIP network back-end, vaguely similar to how Skype does it (largely P2P).

In case you're not aware, Ekiga already exists and is a free-software SIP client implementation. See http://ekiga.org/ . At best this should be an extension for Ekiga, not an entirely new project.

-molo

Ekiga http://www.ekiga.org/ supports h.323 and SIP. There are both Windows and Linux versions

http://ekiga.org/

Is there a Windows port?

Sure, http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Windows_Users

yes. you need a sip-to-pots service which costs some money (i use it for cheap international calls). ekiga is partnered with diamondcard, so you can set this up using an easy wizard. see http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Main_Page or http://www.diamondcard.us/

You're right. The Ekiga website sucks. Tried looking for a MacOSX version of it, finally was able to find this page... however, the whole experience convinced me to try SkypeOut instead, even if proprietary. (we're dropping landlines at home for cellphones-only, and thus need cheap landlines calling capabilities, SkypeOut is 3$/month with illimited call in Canada/USA... sounds like it can work for us (yeah, I know, there's the 911 thing to take into account))

Ekiga!

(On the GNUphone.)

Up until 3.0 Ekiga did suck dick, I agree. And prior to Ekiga the previous GnomeMeeting worked fine. Ekiga has only been sucking between 2.0 up until 3.0. If you haven't tried it lately I recommend the later versions. Good news is that it's a thriving project with constant updates, just look at the changelogs for the 3.2.X series alone. Whatever it is it's completely free and while it has sucked dick at certain times at least it will never let its users to get it up the ass.

Ekiga and QuteCom

As a bonus, they both work on Windows as well as Linux. I cannot attest to their quality compared to Skype but I also cannot think of any reason they should offer less quality than Netmeeting.

Ekiga announced encryption for the 3.0 release, but then quietly buried those plans

On the Ekiga wiki under the heading "Implementation started" one finds "ZRTP (encrypted communication)" suggesting that encryption is being worked on. What exactly were you referring to?

SIP can do IRC-like conference calls (see: the ekiga wiki for some examples). Obviously, voice doesn't scale near as well as text for more than a few people.

It's that users don't want to have to fuck around with shit to make it work.

I didn't *have* to fuck around with anything to get Mplayer, Thunderbird, and Pidgin installed and running. I said "Package Manager, make it so! (and install all the eeeevil codecs, while you're at it)".
I agree that mplayer's frontend sucks. But, have you used Amarok? I have. It's pretty fucking awsome. It claims to have iPod (and other music device) support, but I don't have any such devices to test that claim. IMO, Amarok's waaaaay better than iTunes, and -as a music player and organizer- parsecs beyond WMP. I simply asked my package manager to install that one, too. ;)

And gnomemeeting? I'm thinking you don't actually use it,

You caught me. :/ *has no reason to be videoconferencing.* I don't have a webcam, but did have Ekiga installed -for some damn reason-, so I ran the "Configuration Druid" and accepted the defaults at every page. It ended up autodetected my sound hardware and my NAT, and then enabled STUN.
I then called sip:500@ekiga.net as suggested here, and heard my voice! I called sip:520@ekiga.net as suggested here and found out that I could, indeed be reached from the outside world. I even had a friend call me from his Asterisk site. After thirty mintues of him futzing with his mis-configured Asterisk server, we got a couple of crystal-clear calls in!

I tried to have a Windows using friend call me with Windows Messenger. Following these instructions failed at the login step. Windows Messenger claimed that it couldn't establish a session with ekiga.net. Installing Ekiga and the GTK Runtime worked wonderfully, though. Just like it did on Linux, after my buddy fixed his Asterisk setup.
Are you behind a NAT? If not, would you like to try a SIP call using Windows Messenger?

It's that users don't want to have to fuck around with shit to make it work.

I didn't *have* to fuck around with anything to get Mplayer, Thunderbird, and Pidgin installed and running. I said "Package Manager, make it so! (and install all the eeeevil codecs, while you're at it)".
I agree that mplayer's frontend sucks. But, have you used Amarok? I have. It's pretty fucking awsome. It claims to have iPod (and other music device) support, but I don't have any such devices to test that claim. IMO, Amarok's waaaaay better than iTunes, and -as a music player and organizer- parsecs beyond WMP. I simply asked my package manager to install that one, too. ;)

And gnomemeeting? I'm thinking you don't actually use it,

You caught me. :/ *has no reason to be videoconferencing.* I don't have a webcam, but did have Ekiga installed -for some damn reason-, so I ran the "Configuration Druid" and accepted the defaults at every page. It ended up autodetected my sound hardware and my NAT, and then enabled STUN.
I then called sip:500@ekiga.net as suggested here, and heard my voice! I called sip:520@ekiga.net as suggested here and found out that I could, indeed be reached from the outside world. I even had a friend call me from his Asterisk site. After thirty mintues of him futzing with his mis-configured Asterisk server, we got a couple of crystal-clear calls in!

I tried to have a Windows using friend call me with Windows Messenger. Following these instructions failed at the login step. Windows Messenger claimed that it couldn't establish a session with ekiga.net. Installing Ekiga and the GTK Runtime worked wonderfully, though. Just like it did on Linux, after my buddy fixed his Asterisk setup.
Are you behind a NAT? If not, would you like to try a SIP call using Windows Messenger?

``audio and video compatible SIP client''

Hasn't Ubuntu had that for ages? As far back as I can remember, Ubuntu has always included Ekiga.

Back in the day, I used H.323. Nowadays, I use mostly SIP. Both are open standards that can be used with a variety of clients, such as Ekiga, XMeeting, and Gizmo.

By default, these protocols are unencrypted. I would run them over a VPN (I use OpenVPN) so that all communication is encrypted. This also solves some of the connectivity problems that Network Address Translation creates.

Google documents or Zoho or some other gratis (but typically proprietary) "cloud" solution might be reasonable.

If you're fine with text-only, you have a lot of options. VIM and EMACS both allow collaborative editing, you can share a screen session, or you can get a specialized collaborative editor (such as Gobby and ACE) or a specialized framework, such as DocSynch

If you need light-weight word processing, Abiword has a plugin for real-time collaboration.

Heavier weight word processing of DOCX can be done with Plutext.

If you need more graphical documents & the above doesn't seem to fit AND if you have a small group of friends who you trust, I'd just go "simple" & host with VNC or some other remote desktop protocol.

As far as other pieces, there is a lot of good F/OSS voice/IM/whiteboard software. Coccinella and ekiga are good examples.

http://www.ekiga.org/

Ekiga seems to do what you want, it has pretty good support for various kinds of webcams in Linux.

Use an open protocol such as SIP, for instance you could use Asterisk and Ekiga.

KIAX + Asterisk would be another solution.

http://www.asterisk.org/
http://ekiga.org/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kiax

Can't find any. There are several open source SIP/Voice tools but with Multi-point nope.... Ekiga/GnomeMeeting - http://ekiga.org/ ZAP - http://croczilla.com/zap SFLPhone - http://www.sflphone.org/ OPenWengo - http://www.wengophone.com/ Can anyone list some one? or should the community should try to evolve this projects ?

And it is switching to a shareware based model. ... And, it kind of sucks, and will now focus mainly on Windows. ... So.....

Perhaps you have heard of GnomeMeeting? It is now know as Ekiga. Supports H.323 and SIP and many many codecs.

Doesnt matter, Vonage and all VOIP Providers must be CALEA Complient or huge fines are given.

correction Vontage and all US VOIP Providers must

There fixed it. From you link..
"The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) is a United States wiretapping law passed in 1994 "

Vontage is US based. Where is Ekiga which ships with Ubuntu based?
http://ekiga.org/index.php?rub=3&pos=0&faqpage=x149.html
"1.1.4. What is it compatible with?
Ekiga is compatible with any software, device or router supporting SIP or H.323. It includes SwissVoice, CISCO, SNOM, ... IP Phones, but also software like Windows Messenger, Netmeeting, SJPhone, Eyebeam, X-Lite, ... or also the Asterisk popular IPBX, as well as any other commercial or Open Source IPBX."

How many of these supported services is directly under CALEA?

Vontage may be CALEA Complient. Not everyone is under US rule. Not all VOIP service is commercialy provided.

Just because you can't does not mean Linux can't.

VideoConference http://ekiga.org/

Edit Video http://www.kdenlive.org/

Make mp3s: Insert CD copy mp3 folder with kde.org or Create new with http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

play video games with http://www.winehq.org/ or http://www.transgaming.com/ or god forbid you play open source games designed for linux. Too many to list see here http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php for a start.

make a slideshow, Ever use http://picasa.google.com/linux/ or KDE creates them on the fly from directory of pictures. Not to mention openoffice Impress http://www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html

How about a couple of kernel devs drop off and help Linux go the last mile.

How about you let the kernel devs do what they do best, and acquaint yourself with a little thing I like to call Google http://www.google.com/webhp.

Time to mention Ekiga (formerly GnomeMeeting) and OpenWengo. They suck, but there you go...

I can only speak for free softphones the Linux side.

Ekiga is what I've been using under Fedora Core 5-6 after experimenting with other options. It's an unencumbered SIP client. Make sure to use an up-to-date version. It interoperates well with MS netmeeting. It's works great for personal use.

Most softphones, including the one above, will allow you to choose the audio codec to use for a point to point call. This is a direct tradeoff of bandwidth to quality. You can get a reasonably high quality signal if you have the bandwidth for it. I'd advise experimentation to find the codec that works best with the resources you have available.

There are some serious downsides to VOIP in general:

- The general internet is not 100% reliable. You will experience clipping and dropped calls at some point. You can mitigate this somewhat by configuring your routing equipment at each end to protect and prioritize bandwidth for VOIP.

- There is usually a audio delay by design for buffering. This may be noticable to a third party.

A more professional setup would install a dedicated line between the two premises exclusively for VOIP, making sure that all routers/switches from end-to-end up prioritize and protect VOIP traffic.

There's almost certainly some commercial endpoint hardware just for this situation, with a selection of professional audio-in/out interfaces for hooking up to your gear.

Anyone who has ever used Ekiga will never use Skype again. Ekiga is a VoIP client with video and IM capability, phone book, etc. and it has excellent sound quality. You can get the software here: http://ekiga.org/ and if you don't have a VoIP address yet you can get one here: http://ekiga.net/ or here: http://www.freeworlddialup.com/

You could try Ekiga, formerly known as Gnomemeeting. Free and standards-based, and worked OK for me. It's mainly for linux, but there is a windows port in development. It's not linked from the main page, but you can find it here.

All that crap seems well bloated to me.

I personally use sipdiscount http://www.sipdiscount.com/ and Ekiga http://www.ekiga.org/. Gives me free calls to most of the western world and an incoming UK number.

As far as I know, Ekiga is the only usable open source SIP softphone, wengo and co lock you to one provider.

Anybody knows of a good open source (or just free as in beer) softphone for windows while I wait for Ekiga on win32?

Why can't I just use Skype ?

No project has better screenshots than Ekiga with its delicious model.

Any Ekiga (formerly GnomeMeeting) devs care to comment on whether they'll support this?

On the 2.0 features page:
http://ekiga.org/index.php?rub=2

under General Features it says it has "OSS and ALSA Compatible Soundcards Support".

Maybe 2.0 still doesn't work for you, but maybe it works for other OSS soundcards.

Last week I tried out the Beta in advance of the release of 2.0.0

Ekiga worked well for me with consumer/SOHO SIP providers FWD (http://www.freeworlddialup.com/ ) and Gradwell (http://www.gradwell.com/voip ) as well as http://www.ekiga.net./ I imagine the final version will work fine with http://www.speakeasy.net/home/voip/ but I can't be certain as Speakeasy don't mention on their site what technology they use, or if they will tell you your VoIP username and password. I don't know how their 'Remote Office' private WAN works.

Why not try it and let the world know on the Ekiga mailing list http://www.ekiga.org/index.php?rub=8

One alternative is to get Speakeasy at home, and a low cost SIP account for the laptop (you can get a free Washington State number from ipkall, and there are many other low cost SIP options.) Configure your speakeasy account to forward your calls to your laptop while you are away. Ekiga will work fine on the laptop.

From http://ekiga.org/

Ekiga is a SIP and H.323 compatible VoIP, IP Telephony, and Video Conferencing application that allows you to make audio and video calls to remote users with SIP or H.323 hardware and software. It supports all modern VoIP features for both SIP and H.323.

Ekiga is the first Open Source application to support both H.323 and SIP, as well as audio and video. Ekiga was formerly known as GnomeMeeting.

It's literally the first thing everyone reads on that site.

OpenWengo:
SIP compliant VoIP client (+ Video ?), Firefox extension, GPL: http://openwengo.com/

Ekiga:
VoIP and video conferencing application (H.323 and SIP) for GNOME, GPL: http://www.ekiga.org/

PhoneGaim:
VoIP system based on the Gaim instant messaging software and the SIP protocol, GPL: http://www.phonegaim.com/ (sponsored by Linspire: Some controversy exists over the perceived difficulty faced by non-Linspire users who wish to install PhoneGaim on their Linux system.)

sipX:
SIP based products (pbx, softphone, and supporting products), LGPL: http://www.sipfoundry.org/sipX/

Google's Libjingle:
Implementation of Jingle and Jingle-Audio (proposed extensions to XMPP), BSD License: https://sourceforge.net/projects/libjingle/

KPhone:
VoIP application for the KDE desktop environment, SIP, GPL: http://kphone.sourceforge.net/


Skype: http://www.skype.com/

Google Talk: http://www.google.com/talk/

Gizmo Project: http://gizmoproject.com/