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?"

Comments

Chatroulette or Omegle, obviously.

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, you want to be using Chatroulette or Omegle.

Skype

[Charcharodon]

uh....skype maybe. Just because MS got a hold of it means its down the tubes just yet.

Re:Skype

[Spicerun]

Obviously you haven't had the joy of using something after MS took it over. I've seen a few programs go down the tubes after MS bought the company. Sure, they didn't go down the tubes immediately, but they did die a long slow painful death. And the customers who stuck with those acquired programs got screwed ultimately.

Re:Skype

[larry bagina]

How about QDOS? They bought it from Tim Paterson, renamed it, upgraded it over the next 20 years, added a GUI, then released Windows ME. Anybody who used Windows ME was screwed pretty hard.

Re:Skype

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Skype

[GPLHost-Thomas]

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.

Re:Skype

[Haeleth]

If anything, I am hoping Microsoft will actually work well on it and improve on it greatly.

Microsoft is very likely to work on Skype and improve it greatly.

Microsoft is very unlikely to make the versions they have worked on and greatly improved available for any platforms other than Microsoft Windows, and possibly OS X if you're really lucky.

Got an Android phone? You'd better stop depending on Skype, as quickly as you can, because you can bet your bottom dollar one of the first things that will happen is that "chat with all your friends on Skype!" will become a unique selling point of the Microsoft Windows Phone platform.

Check the last story?

[nschubach]

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/05/19/1956219/Linux-Friendly-Alternatives-To-Skype

There's also:

http://alternativeto.net/software/skype/?exactmatch=true

You mean a SIP client?

[bradm]

Perhaps you could start evaluating some of these?

Jabber / Google Talk

[kiwix]

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).

Oh noes, Microsoft! End of world!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Oh noes, Microsoft! End of world!

[concord]

Microsoft is no angel, but they aren't the devil either.

Yeah, I mean ... at least they're not Apple.

What about Skype?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

You have it all wrong

[Troke]

This is the perfect excuse to stop talking to your family.

Edge a bet?

[capnkr]

Dear story submitter/writer and /. editors:

You don't 'edge' bets, you Hedge bets. FYI.

There is nothing else

[atomicbutterfly]

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.

Re:There is nothing else

[atomicbutterfly]

skype on linux is buggy and so so. I give it two chances to get better under MS management, slim and none. Thus as an avid promoter of thin-client linux boxes, I'm not unlikely to want to risk investing in corporate multi-screen-sharing chat accounts, and or skype centric voip phones.

Skype has been crap under Linux for ages, and hadn't shown much sign of getting better even before Microsoft bought them out. I remember the announcement that the Skype UI would be open sourced - what's happened since? Absolutely nothing.

Point is, if you look at the direction Skype has been going on Linux (nowhere), you probably wouldn't have picked Skype to use on your Linux boxes with or without Microsoft's influence, and would have looked elsewhere. Besides, I thought the commercial side of VoIP was already a mature market, with many alternatives to Skype (we're talking corporate level here, not consumer).

Jitsi

[Bryan3000000]

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.

Re:Google talk

[smash]

Also... google talk is Jabber. Any open source jabber client will work. So actually, it kinda IS open-source.

Re:Google talk

[dch24]

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.