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Video Conferencing for Unix?

Posted by Cliff on from the it's-2001-already-where-are-the-vidphones? dept.

LordDavon asks: "I have been trying to find a good video conferencing solution for Linux. The main issue is that my family and many friends are subjects under the Microsoft tyranny and use Microsoft NetMeeting. Although it is a nicely featured application (Whiteboard, VNC, File Transfer, etc...), I am failing to find a comparable application for Linux. Is there a single, low cost, multi-platform application that can compete?" While I'm not so sure about the existence of a whole suite of Open Source applications that can compete with NetMeeting, are there apps that are usable solely for video conferencing? We touched on this exact question two years ago, we also talked about shared whiteboards as well, although a bit more recently. Are any of you out there using Linux (or any Unix clone for that matter) in Video Conferencing? If so, how?

6 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. GNOMEMeeting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Might want to give GNOMEMeeting a try. Supposedly it works with NetMeeting but I've never had much success with it. Typical Linux software - half implemented and a mess.

    1. Re:GNOMEMeeting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Whoops, that should be GNOMEMeeting.org.

    2. Re:GNOMEMeeting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I do not agree with you. I'm successfully using GnomeMeeting since 2 months every day with some friends (I do not live where I'm born), and it works flawlessly and is from far better than Netmeeting. Guys like you should help to improve it instead of criticize and say stupid things.
      When something doesn't work for somebody, there can be 2 reasons : the user is stupid or the software is bad. As I run it successfully, I think that you are stupid. Sorry, but your comment was stupid and I can say to everybody here that GnomeMeeting runs pretty good and has the most intuitive and clean UI I've never seen on Linux.

  2. I haven't tried this: by Peter+H.S. · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://cvw.sourceforge.net/ seems to fit your bill somewhat.

    The Java client should run on Win, Posix (Linux?) and even Palm (no video I guess).

    However, it does require a dedicated document server.

    Projects like confman (java too) seems very slick, but is only for people having acces for Mbone (ip6?).

    GnomeMeeting (http://www.gnomemeeting.org) is very slick too. It supports the H.323 protocol, so it should work with MS Netmeeting. However no chat, whiteboards etc, only video and voice. (those functions usually requires the T.120 protocol).

  3. www.openh323.org by carleton · · Score: 3, Informative

    I haven't been tracking them for a quite a while, but they seem to have a start towards what you're looking for. One big problem they were having (which may or may not still be true) was that some of the other protocols being used by netmeeting and other videoconferencing over networks were patented.
    Besides, who really wants to see their boss/coworkers? Wouldn't it be better to get cracking on some manner of better looking avatars?

  4. It may not be linux but.... by squeegee-me · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sun has a firewire camer for VC that they are selling for the Sun Blade workstations. It comes with Sun's version of netmeeting, which is compatable. I don't know if the app is freely downloadable or not, but the camera cost about $250 with the app on a CD. If it is freely avalable, they may have a x86 version as well in the works. It's been a while since I looked into it but you should be able to find the specs under the Blade 100 or 1000 pages. If I find a link to the kit, I'll post again as a resonce to this.

    --
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