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Skype VoIP Software Released For Linux
pmf writes "Skype Technologies has just released a free beta version of their software for Linux. Skype is well known P2P VoIP technology that, according to them: '...is addressing all the problems of legacy VoIP solutions: bad sound quality, difficult to set up and configure, and the need for expensive, centralized infrastructure.'"
Seeing as how this is from the Kazaa people, are we to expect spyware in this product?
please read the EULA.
The most information I've found is that the software is made by the makers of KaZaa, who is notorious for trying to make money off of P2P. Does Skype have a business plan? Is there spyware/adware/malware? Anyone know?
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
Sez on the linked page this is from the same folks that brought you KaZaa!
Great. The folks that introduced spyware EULAs to file sharing now want to handle your phone service. OSS or not, can they be trusted to provide any more free downloads?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I guess Amiga is next in line.
>Technical Questions
>
>Will Skype for Linux beta be made available as open >source code?
> No.
TY, HAND
Since OS X offers an X11 window manager, and runs on BSD - could this be made to run on OS X? Does anyone want to try to get it to work, and make a predone binary/package for those who are less technically inclined?
Or will skype release the final version on both OS X and linux? How hard is this cross-os coding?
Isn't this one of the two clients supported by Vonage?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
One of the best uses for VoIP is using it with small portable devices like PDA's. It seems Skype is available for PocketPC, but will this release also work on Linux-based handhelds like the Zaurus or Opie/Familiar-loaded iPAQs ? If so, I'll seriously consider replacing my Tungsten C.
Ciryon
Not only is that an unimportant question, it's also a stupid one. If they *had* to go the free software way, Speex would be the codec to use for VoIP.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Where are binaries for other than x86 archs?
Linux is more than just x86...
If this is truely P2P, are there measures in place to help prevent eavesdropping? Do parts of the voice data route different ways, so one node would have a hard time picking up enough of the voice data to be useful? Is the voice data encrypted?
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
In my limited testing of Skype it's managed to suck out all my bandwidth...on one occasion it appeared to be using about 80% of processor (AMD64-3000). Since when I have given it a miss.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
So? So were most cablemodems until recently. VoIP is a new technology to the consumer market, it will take a while for one or two standards to settle, and when they do, just like most things like DVD formats and Cable modem protocols and such, firmware gets upgraded and no one cares. Besides, so their proprietary, what di you want to do, take your hardware and move to some other linux-native VoIP provider? Wait...there aren't any.
No excuse, sorry. There exist OPEN standards, PUBLISHED standards out there that are supported by hundreds of hardware and software solutions.
As for "Linux-native" VoIP provider, that makes no sense. Who cares? There are hardware and software solutions available for Linux and utilize existing open and published standards. Do some research on Google to find them.
Who cares what protocol you speak from your headset unit to the 'Net, once it gets to the 'Net it's IP. When it gets to the phone system, it's converted to proprietary digital forms that Sprint or AT&T use, and when it reaches another VoIP carrier, it might convert to another protocol. It doesn't matter though, the frmat is meaningless to the data.
Propretary digital formats? You mean, u-Law? Nice try. Even the larger nascent VoIP providers don't resort to such foolishness because they are able to leverage EXISTING solutions. What is important is to be able to transit between providers easily and seemlessly. Consumers have been asking for this from cellphone providers for YEARS (i.e., locked-in phones) and the FCC and courts have finally taken notice.
There are no pictures in Voice. If you want videoconferencing, use another service. But if you want good audio quality, use a service that utilizes all of your available bandwidth for audio (go figure, a specialized service works better than a general one).
VoIP has been somewhat generalized lately. Packet8 provides a videophone now to customers. Moving from a circuit-switched environment to a packet-switched environment allows all kinds of new things to be done that could not be easily accomplished before across the same infrastructure. SIP, one commonly used VoIP signalling protocol, even includes support for multiple data streams to be handled at once, voice, video, and even text and application data (for IM or whiteboarding, for instance). Don't be so limited in your view.
Haven't got it to work for Linux.... the OS with the free industrial strength PBX?
I prefer 'real' phones any day, so I have a cisco 7940 sat on my desk connected to a Linux Asterisk server (which is in turn connected to FWD, and POTS via an FXO card). There's a cheapy grandstream in the bedroom as well.
Sound quality is excellent on both phones... no need for skype (which is nothing more than msn/yahoo + hype really... if you can't dial a POTS line and can't connect a real phone it's hardly VOIP).
Also remember speakfreely It has been going for 12 years or so, and is open-source cross-platform unix/windows. Recently work on it has revived, and it now uses the speex codec. (some details here: http://www.2pi.info/software/sf_speex/) It is a project in need of more developers though. So it's a project to think of where some positive work can be done rather than complaining that some other project doesn't have the source.