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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.
Before you download and configure this, test your connection out so see if it can handle VoIP. You can also play with different codecs to see if one is better than the other over your connection.
-ben
Another thing the Linux platform has thus been missing: Spyware.
I highly doubt that the guys who made Kazaa have taken some great leap into the world of moral business. Bastards.
Skype is hype...
* Skype is proprietary.
* Skype is using a proprietary protocol that no VoIP carriers/providers will be using.
* Skype has better sound quality? Let me laugh, it just happens that Skype is only able to do audio, so all your upload can be devoted to audio.
OK, Skype is a nice toy for Windows users. For Linux users, there is GnomeMeeting (http://www.gnomemeeting.org) and Linphone.
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.
Free World Dialup makes a good product which I find is better and is the superior option of choices. You can find this with the Google searches for terms like Free World Dialup with the quotes surrounding.
Read journal when you are not understand
Skype claims P2P but the voice has to go through at least one hop, so the latency is pretty poor and you need other (hijacked) nodes. Check out this VoIP system, which has low latency, direct peer to peer communications even through NAT on both sides. Oh, and blowfish for encryption so good... it may be illegal in your country!
In related news, the baby bells have tapped the RIAA for their team of lawyers to start tracking down individuals that are using their communication networks and are not paying access fees like other phone companies do to operate over their lines. Then they will sue them until everyone gives up computers and goes back to taking the needle of the record so they can ring up the operator for the klondike 5 number of their friend down the street. I can't wait.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
Overseas, I've had less luck. From my place in Central NY, my Skype calls to a friend in Amsterdam are generally intolerable, although he reports that it works fine when he talks to his brother in Philly. I've had poor but acceptable connections using Skype to talk to a friend in Madrid.
Voice quality has continued to improve slightly with each new release of Skype. But for me, the verdict is Skype is sensational within North America, and barely tolerable or outright unusable for calling overseas.
Still, I wish everyone had broadband and Skype. Even without taking the fact that it's free, it just sounds measurably better than standard long distance calls within the US.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
At this point Skype for Linux is being offered without the SkypeOut service that allows calls to go to any telephone, not just other Skype users. Still, it's great to bring new platforms and more users onto this system. Bring on the OS X version!
>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?
From the FAQ SkypeOut (what enables to call external phone numbers) is not enabled for the Linux version, and that could be what makes it worth, or different from other available solutions.... or is something common and widely used?
Isn't this one of the two clients supported by Vonage?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
they internally alpha'd a Mac version as of June 16, 2004 (which went well) and expect it will take 2-3 months more for it to show up.
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
Are you talking about Ogg Vorbis or Ogg FLAC or Ogg Speex? Speex is better for that kind of task. :-)
"Speex is an Open Source/Free Software patent-free audio compression format designed for speech" and speex is part of the xiph foundation
download and burn linux with one click on windows
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...
I like Skype, I just wish my girlfriend didn't sound like a robot half the time.
paul reinheimer
What a great business plan.
."
Just below the level of audibility, you get a breathy feminine voice telling you she "digs geeks who buy
Media-shifted Spam. My bleeding ears.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I did. They have changed the EULA since people were upset about the 'third party software' part. It doesn't seem as evil now, but I'm still so wary that I haven't installed it yet.
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
If they make skype interoperability plugin/module for Asterisk then I might reconsider the usability of this product.
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.
Just mentioning that skype is a cpu hog. This matters because it means it's not great for playing recent video games.
A great alternative is teamspeak which lets groups of players talk. Another alternative (I haven't tried this one) is Ventrillo.
Skype is great if you just want to use your computer for wireless chit chat.
I might as well plug the Jabra BT250 bluetooth headset while I'm at it. Wireless headset with up to 8 hours of talk time. I use this plus teamspeak to give me the freedom to wander my house and not loose contact with my gaming buddies. It also works nicely with my powerbook and my cell phone.
---
I support spreading santorum
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.
I can see the argument now.
End User: What the fsck is this Adware doing on my computer?!
Skype: We needed funding to add new features and/or improve the technical performance of the software. In order to get this funding, we included Adware into the software. Perfectly legit by the EULA's terms.
The stupidity of your average American is just about the same as the average European, we simply show it off better.
Look, the big deal about Skype is the fact that it... Get this: WORKS! It works through dial-up. It works through broadband. It works through most proxies and NATs due to it's centralized servers.
Those are the real advantages. Get behind a proxy server and then try any other VOIP 'solution'. Of course, they're going to have to pay for all this somehow eventually...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Vonage actually believes in standards.
Nothing beats the ease of setup and use of my new VoIP phone with Packet8. $49 set up fee and they sent me a DTE.
Plug DTE into power, hub and my cordless phone base station and I had dial tone.
They assigned me a local number, so it is a local call from my office.
Free calls worldwide to other Packet8 scuscribers. Unlimited calls in US/Canada for people with regular phones. $20.59/month and that INCLUDES all taxes.
I get to use my cordless phone and speaker phones. I can take the DTE with me and my phone number follows me.
Oh, and Packet8 just introduced *real* E911, for the paranoid among you. (Note: If you take the DTE travelling with you and then call 911, it'll claim you're at your address on file -- back home.)
Father's Day alone saved me the $20 in what would have been LD charges.
For those that love the software phones, Vonage supports one that has a Linux client as well.
And VoicePulse will allow you to set up your own Asterisk server, hook in and use them as a PSTN gateway.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
As someone else mentioned - FreeWorld Dialup is a great way to go for voip:
- standards based
- Free
- Windows, Linux and pocketpc clients available
- Call 800 numbers and more
- Call to/from vonage customers
- get free phone number and have people call you
- Get a wisip phone (WiFi SIP) and you have the closest thing to a IP mobile phone you can get.
FreeWorld Dialup
I'm currently running windows and ipaq (pocketpc 2002) clients fine. And calling my home vonage service - no problem!
According to their FAQ - yes. But since they use closed protocol, it is not worth a penny. They can be calling XOR masking an 'unrivaled privacy' for all I know.
They can't claim security unless it's verifiable, and it cannot be verifiable unless it's open. And even if it's open, the implementation can be flawed either accidently or intentionally (!).
So the best bet for an average paranoid is to consider calls going in plaintext unless proved otherwise.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Erm.. actually, no. IANAL, of course, but knowing a tiny bit of how Skype is supposed to work (that is, as a P2P application), what that part of the licence is saying is that you allow Skype to use your CPU and bandwith, yes, but for the purprose of helping other Skype users make their calls. Basically, by agreeing to that part of the licence, you're allowing the program to do what it says it was gonna do, integrate your computer into a P2P network of machines that shuttle encrypted voice data back and forth. There's no way to get 'See, it's spyware!' from that part of the license, seriously. Show me the part where it claims the right to install third party software without having to inform you, or the part where it lays claim to a goodly chunk of your hard drive for storing ads for other companies, and then we'll talk.
"Two things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the first one." - Albert Einstein
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.
AFAIK, the very first versions of Kazaa didn't come bundled with Spyware ... these are the guys that wrote the first versions, then passed it on to other, more business minded, people when it started to be a big thing. I don't know at what point the spyware entered the picture, but if it was sometime after the first Kazaa ownership change, they shouldn't be blamed.
... so ... Go skype.
And be that as it may, I think this is great news. I have used Skype quite a bit although it's the lack of a Linux version has been real annoying. It works great, is dead easy to use and provides great sound. Of course I could use GnomeMeeting or whatever instead, but that's not true for my parents or many of my other friends.
I have not seen any kind of spyware at all.
For any kind of communication program the main goal is userbase, userbase, userbase. And you get that by being easy to use
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.