Microsoft Releases 'Next Generation' Preview of Skype For Linux (skype.com)

BrianFagioli writes: Friday, Microsoft released a refreshed preview of Skype for Linux. There are both DEB and RPM packages available, making it easy to install on, say, Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora. In fact, I successfully installed it on Pop!_OS earlier today. Believe it or not, the new interface is quite nice, making it something I could possibly enjoy using on my Linux machine.

"Great news for Skype for Linux users -- the next generation of Skype for Linux is launching!" says The Skype Team. "Starting today, you can download Skype Preview for Linux and start enjoying new features across all your devices -- including screen sharing and group chat. With Skype for Linux, you can take advantage of the screen sharing feature on your desktop screen. Now, you can share content with everyone on the call -- making it even easier to bring your calls to life and collaborate on projects."

Comments

another useless cloud app

[Anonymous Coward]

If I can't use it on my own private internet.. Then its dead to me, Just like microsoft.

Re:Why no good open source alternative?

[ledow]

Not interesting, hard to do, hard to compete, lots of patent and licensing issues (you have to avoid ALL the well-known protocols, etc.) and never going to be compatible with other protocols because of the ever-shifting changes (e.g. MSN Messenger video - was documented, but nobody ever got it to work reliably for any length of time before it was changed)

It was a FSF priority for - what? a decade? - but if nobody bothers to shift focus, funding, effort and resources to it, nothing happens.

Same as almost all the FSF priorities, it's basically a made-up list of shit nobody wants to work on because there's zero incentive to, and FSF doesn't really help them out at all. Since the early days, just about every non-proprietary protocol has had poor audio and video support, as far back as people using MSN Messenger, Yahoo IM, AOL IM, Trillian, Pidgin, etc.

I gave up waiting after all that time of literally only having reliable text-message sending, and then Skype and things like Whatsapp just stepped in and took over in a matter of months when the smartphone era came about. These apps are about connecting to friends, and if your friends can't get your app going by just downloading and clicking your name, then they won't touch it. Without that people-network backing, the protocol / app / service is just dead in the water.

We could have won the whole industry, and become a household name at one point - the point where smartphones came out, running Android, and voice-, picture- and video- messaging were expensive. The WhatsApp era killed it off immediately. But you can't expect people to work for free, and hoping they'd just turn up and volunteer has resulted in precisely ZIP.

At one point, Jabber and XMPP was used by Google Talk. Those days are pretty dead, I think, and I reckon it was the same reason. "We have an IRC equivalent, that'll do". And then nobody works on the video/audio side, development stagnates and Google go their own way.

Ironic, given that in things like smartphone-connected CCTV systems, it's almost all Linux, and that's basically the same problem, just in one direction.

Nobody actually has any incentive to code on this stuff. The Flash replacement that was also "top priority" didn't even manage to make a name for itself before Flash itself was declared dead.

It's all very well saying "Why isn't there..." but if nobody at these big organisations steps up to organise, support, fund, resource, etc. the project then it's down to hobbyists, who generally all just pick up their smartphone and use a proprietary app.

Especially video-services. That needs a lot of high-bandwidth, low-latency server hardware in the middle, even if it's all encrypted. It's not just a case of writing a program where A talks to B.

DO NOT ENTER A YOUNG BIRTHDATE!!!

[gavron]

I fired up the preview and it insisted it wanted my date of birth.

I entered 1/1/2017.

It told me I had to get my parents' permission, and they had to go sign up on account.microsoft.com for that.

Exiting the preview and restarting makes no difference. Skype/Microsoft now "knows" the Skype account
I've had for 17 years belongs to someone who is 10 months old tomorrow. Wow.

I won't be using Skype anytime ever again, I guess, or maybe in 18 years?

Thanks for sucking as usual, Microsoft. Nothing weird about having a broken software lock me out of something I've been using for ages.

E