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Ask Slashdot: FOSS, Multiplatform Skype Replacement for PC-to-PC Video Chat?
obarthelemy writes "Skype having just been borged, now may be a good time to hedge our bets and look for a replacement. I'm *not* looking for something that interfaces with POTS, but just a simple PC-to-PC video chat tool that is very easy to configure and use, reliable, multiplatform (my family has Windows, Linux, MacOS; iOS and Android would be nice extras), and has good video/voice quality. We're almost only skyping with each other. What would you recommend?"
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/05/19/1956219/Linux-Friendly-Alternatives-To-Skype
There's also:
http://alternativeto.net/software/skype/?exactmatch=true
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
On the announcement that Microsoft had bought Skype I uninstalled Skype and installed Ekiga. I signed up for the free Ekiga account. Got it all running within a few minutes. No tinkering with configuration files. Just plug in the account information you registered at Ekiga.net. Emails are out to all my correspondents now urging them to convert to Ekiga.
My immediate family has already converted, even the Windows only users. My favorite correspondents have too.
Ekiga is installable from the Ubuntu repositories and works out of the box.
Jabber is a good open protocol for Instant Messaging, and it has extensions for voice and video. The main idea is that it works like the email system: you can have an account on any server, and chat/talk/video with someone on a different server. There a many different clients to use the Jabber protocol, just like there are many different mail clients. And all of them are supposed to interact nicely with each other.
My favorite client is telepathy which support the voice and video features (but getting the right codec is somewhat painfull), and has good NAT traversal capabilities. It runs on Linux, and on my N900.
If you're looking for something more Windows-friendly, you can use the Google Talk plugin: Google Talk is just a Jabber server, and you can use it with any other Jabber server, and any client. The plugin is available for Windows and Linux (and there is probably something for Android).
Dear story submitter/writer and /. editors:
You don't 'edge' bets, you Hedge bets. FYI.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
Exactly. Remember Foxpro? It was actively maintained, and the developers actually listened to users' requests. When Microsoft announced .NET, suddenly all support for Foxpro went down the drain. Bugs kept cluttering programs and all complaints went to deaf ears.
Worse: Even with its limitations and abandonment, Microsoft won't relase the foxpro (and ide) source code so we can make our improvements. Why? Because it might compete with "better" Microsoft solutions. This is a perfect case of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
They haven't even bought skype yet. Idiot.
What used to be SIP Communicator, now Jitsi (because they added many protocols besides SIP). I can't believe I'm having to recommend this on /. so often. It has XMPP video chat and desktop sharing, and has all the other common protocols as well as SIP. It's in rapid development at this point, but has been stable for me since began using it a couple of weeks ago.
The state of things in integrated communications is sad indeed with so few alternatives and fragmentation.
Also... google talk is Jabber. Any open source jabber client will work. So actually, it kinda IS open-source.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Yes. Empathy
I just finished trying out gyache/gyachi (Yahoo! Voice and Video chat, open source) and it doesn't work nearly as well. Also, it just runs the proprietary codecs using the relevant wine source code, so it's not truly open source.
Maybe because: :)
- We care about our freedom in general, Skype shouldn't be the exception
- We don't trust Microsoft
- We do trust the US government AND the Chinese to spy on us using the Skype network. There's already a "special" Chinese version with the "feature" to have big brother listening. Who know's what the "normal" version does.
- Skype on Linux is crap, there's no 64 bits version (no, the package they pretend to be 64 bits isn't 64 bits at all, it's a 32 bits version with some lib32 dependencies). Moreover, it crashes, and you have to use loads of tricks to have everything working, like starting it with "env LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype", otherwise it simply doesn't work. Even Adobe Flash has a real 64 bits version. Skype is the only software on my OS which is like that, and even if so many people asked for a real build for 64 bits, they've been ignoring all requests.
- The one and only one Linux developer for Skype has already proven, through the BTS and others, that he isn't competent to do the job. Do you think this is going to change with MS on board? That they will hire better coders? That's a big bet.
- Skype is the only instant messaging app that doesn't integrate well with multi-network libs like purple from Pidgin.
- Skype said they would at some point provide a "libskype" so that we could implement our own GUI, but it's not happening
- No announcement has been made by MS about the future of Skype for Mac or Linux
- Skype audio support is bad, it crashes often.
- Skype is the only absolutely needed piece of software for which we don't have source for, if you don't account flash as well (but flash has (buggy) compatible alternatives which you can deal with, Skype doesn't)
- Did I mention that Skype crashes often in Linux?
And also, please avoid to call FOSS supporters "knee jerk" in this site, as there's a good chance that others wont like it and will mod you out (I don't get why this hasn't happen already by the way). Anyway, the issues with Skype aren't new, and have absolutely nothing to do with the fact it's now a MS product.
Now, I don't get why the OP went through. We all have been knowing for a long time how bad the situation is, and how much we need some alternatives. Something open, with encryption at all levels, multi-platform, and decentralized. I'm sure it will happen, but I'm also sure this wont be tomorrow.