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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?"
Clearly, you want to be using Chatroulette or Omegle.
Ekiga?
uh....skype maybe. Just because MS got a hold of it means its down the tubes just yet.
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.
Perhaps you could start evaluating some of these?
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).
Come on, seriously? Skype was a non-open source program before, which met all your needs, and did a great job. Microsoft is likely going to invest heavily in it, and integrate it into Windows 8, XBox360, and a lot of other things, making it more useful to you as more people will be using it.
Microsoft is no angel, but they aren't the devil either.
I hear Skype does everything you want. Perhaps you are dissastisfied with it because your microphone only recognizes oral communication and is unable to understand when you talk out your ass.
This is the perfect excuse to stop talking to your family.
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
Skype outpaces all other alternatives by far, particularly with regards to satisfying the "very easy to configure and use, reliable, multiplatform and has good video/voice quality" requirements. There's a reason so many people use it, and there's a reason Linux users still installed Skype when they were thrown scraps in terms of support and updates.
Keep using Skype until such time that it NO LONGER WORKS (which I suspect will be for a very long time). Just because Microsoft owns it now doesn't mean it's dead. If it finally falls over in something like Linux, then you can move onto something such as Ekiga or whatever else has been developed, but there's simply nothing else in the consumer world that compares.
Heh... "Skype having just been borged". You could at least explain how Skype no longer works for you instead of letting emotions cloud logic.
Its free. Not open source, but its as free as skype was, and not "borged". A proper FOSS alternative (at least with any form of market penetration, so you know... you can actually talk to other users) doesn't really exist.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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.
Market penetration is pretty irrelevant -- the submitter mentioned that they "only skype each other". If SIP is easy enough, it's also more than good enough.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
We're almost only skyping with each other. What would you recommend ?
The only chat client that makes sense is the client used by those you want to chat with. Skype works so well for so many, you simply can't expect them to switch.
not available is most countries either
Apparently you missed the announcement where they said they would be dropping a platform.
You can't just wait until the last possible minute on this sort of thing. Stuff like this doesn't just pop out of the ether over night.
In a working free market, this should not even be an issue. There should be 2 other obvious alternatives already in place.
However, software usually doesn't work by free market commodity rules. That's why you have a lot of "whining".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> It's in rapid development at this point, but has been stable for me since began using it a couple of weeks ago.
I too have been using Jitsi, including extensive use with my over-60 parents on Windows and people using Linux and OS-X. It has been extremely satisfying, offering both more stability and higher voice quality than my cellphone -- plus video.
Connections can be made peer-to-peer, and with end-to-end encryption. And if you want to get really obsessive, you can tunnel over SSH, through multiple hops, whatever floats your boat. No more blind trust of third parties.
There are also services for linking a traditional telephone number to your SIP account for under $10/month, so you can get everything you get with Skype.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
gtalk (as google's official client) is not, but the protocols are open. IM uses jabber protocol, video and audio uses SIP IIRC. i know pidgin and koppete in linux supports video on google talk.
What ? Me, worry ?
Is Cu-SeeMe still around?
That little piece of software was capable of group video calls like 16 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe
As tech journalist and podcaster Skype has been the backbone of the industry for doing remote interviews. But to record it is a hack at best. Who ever makes a FOSS Video / Audio HD multiple guest video confrence software please allow for individual recording of the streams of audio and video. Skype technically could have done this but muxxed the audio from multiple guests together, the video then could be layered as different video layers using plugins on the mac side like Call Recorder. But If anything allowing for people to record multiple video sources would be key. I was originally planning a sit down with reps from TWiT, Revision3, AOL, PBS, & PixelCorps to have a sit down with Skype engineers to hopefully address these issues but the meeting was canceled a month before the announcement of the purchase from Microsoft. I understand why now. Some of the basic wishes from everyone was that skype might: 1) Split Video and Audio channels to make them accessible to 3rd party developers. 2) Remote starts and built-in recording... so everyone can double end record for higher quality 3) Higher Quality Video, in the 720p and 1080p range 4.) Dedicated connection support as to not have random changes in in audio / video quality 5.) Output of video channels for software video switchers and streamers like Telestreams Wirecast Pro
There was an article titled "Linux-Friendly Alternatives To Skype" less than a week ago! What's the point in repeating the discussion?
My brother is out of the country. He prefers skype but his internet connection sucks. Rarely were we able to have a complete conversation and when we were, we constantly had to stop, start, and restate what was just said before the packet loss storm hit. I finally got him to try mumble. Despite using twice the bandwidth, providing vastly superior voice quality, thanks to the ability to force TCP and tweak additional network settings, we're now always able to have a complete conversation without any interruptions. And even though its using TCP, very rarely do we suffer the Max Headroom effect.
While mumble doesn't allow for video, skype isn't even competitive with mumble for voice services. And if we really needed to, we could easily use less bandwidth than skype for comparable voice quality. The fact mumble provides for so many network and audio tweaks makes it all the better.
Seriously, aside from PBX interchange, who gives a shit about skype in the first place. Its not like there are not tons of other solutions - almost all of which are superior.
Hell, last time I shopped phone minutes, google talk's rates were HALF that of skype's. Seriously, fuck skype!