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Microsoft Releases Skype As a Snap For Linux (betanews.com)
BrianFagioli writes: While Microsoft has long been viewed as an enemy of the Linux community -- and it still is by some -- the company has actually transformed into an open source champion. One of Microsoft's biggest Linux contributions, however, is Skype -- the wildly popular communication software. By offering that program to desktop Linux users, Microsoft enables them to easily communicate with friends and family that aren't on Linux, thanks to its cross-platform support. Today, Microsoft further embraces Linux by releasing Skype as a Snap. This comes after two other very popular apps became available in Snap form -- Spotify and Slack.
"Skype is used by millions of users globally to make free video and voice calls, send files, video and instant messages and to share both special occasions and everyday moments with the people who matter most. Skype has turned to snaps to ensure its users on Linux, are automatically delivered to its latest versionupon release. And with snaps' roll-back feature, whereby applications can revert back to the previous working version in the event of a bug, Skype's developers can ensure a seamless user experience," says Canonical.
"Skype is used by millions of users globally to make free video and voice calls, send files, video and instant messages and to share both special occasions and everyday moments with the people who matter most. Skype has turned to snaps to ensure its users on Linux, are automatically delivered to its latest versionupon release. And with snaps' roll-back feature, whereby applications can revert back to the previous working version in the event of a bug, Skype's developers can ensure a seamless user experience," says Canonical.
Don't install that snap!
Wah. Ha. Ha. Ha. ha. ha ha gasp wheeze choke
Good one. Now pull the other leg.
What is a "snap"? Has the distro-packaging problem finally been solved?
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Is it a real application, or is it a slimmed down web browser with the sucky HTML version of Skype?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
LUDDITE Linux can now run snappy app Skype snap! Appy snap apps! Skypes! Snaps!
Snaps are containerised software packages that are simple to create and install. They auto-update and are safe to run. And because they bundle their dependencies, they work on all major Linux systems without modification.
https://snapcraft.io/
Skype is a "wildly popular communication software" in the same way that chlamydia is a "wildly popular" STI. Sometimes numbers alone don't tell the whole story ...
---
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." -- George Carlin
Now when a security update comes for a core library, now I get to update every single snap instead of just updating the system library...
Yay for static linking, I mean containers....
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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"While Microsoft has long been viewed as an enemy of the Linux community -- and it still is by some -- the company has actually transformed into an open source champion."
Wow! Is that straight from the MS marketing slime?
Oh. That's why I thought.
It's like flatpak, except just works on ubuntu, because not invented here. Basically.
It's like Flatpak, only from Canonical.
yes they are true champions, they bought skype and removed linux support, and now they added it back for a backdoored, NON open source, voice service that we can get a million other places, what champions of the linux open source community, I can't imagine how people could see them as the enemy of computing, much less linux.
it's still just a shitty electron app
What makes them "safe to run"? Is the software that they run in the container open source and can be inspected? If not, how do you know it is "safe to run"?
are safe to run
What do you mean by "safe"? Do snaps possess some special isolation not afforded to traditional executables?
Debian to be specific. It would not work with my friends who use the Windows version of Skype. Skype would connect, but no video, no audio. And no error message of any kind.
It's been working pretty well on Ubuntu already as a deb, but this can't hurt.
I'll take a chance to wander off topic a bit (being an AC, I suppose this will never work, but here's to nothing)! Do anyone know any good alternatives to Skype that work on ARM? In my use case I'd like to call my turtles at home when I'm away on holiday, since I have a hacked together food dispenser (to alert them that food is coming, and see that everything works). I had skype running on a Raspberry PI via exagear's x86 emulator. It's set to auto-accept calls with video, which used to work great! Turns out the new versions of Skype only supports x86-64 now, so that's the end. I really like to have full duplex audio and a video feed -- things like Motion don't quite do it. I've dabbled in SIP clients etc., but didn't get it to work and don't know where to start. Any ideas for a local desktop video conferencing application which works on ARM? It would make me and my turtles really happy!
skype or Skype for Business?
" the company has actually transformed into an open source champion"
Really? So Skype is being released as an open source app? No. Windows is being released as an open source OS? No. Microsoft has agreed to stop using patents and fear mongering to extract money from companies using open source software? No.
So Microsoft is actively working against open source companies and is not releasing its software under open source licenses. How exactly is Microsoft an open source champion?
In the early days of microcomputing, we used static linking when creating an application binary. The code we wrote would be linked against any third-party libraries, and a single binary containing the application code and the library code would be the result. Life was easy.
Then there was this huge push toward dynamic linking, with its proponents going on about how it's supposed to use less memory, it's supposed to use less disk space, and it's supposed to allow libraries to be updated easily, and so on and so forth.
But then we experienced "DLL hell" or the "shared object shitshow", which turned out to be far worse than anything we experienced with static linking.
So workarounds, like the various Linux package managers, were created to try to handle the complex dependencies between applications and their shared libraries. This is effectively a complex form of static linking, done by keeping shared library versions consistent with the installed applications.
When that proved to be problematic, such as when there were different applications that depended on different versions of the same shared library, we started seeing a move toward this "containerization" nonsense. There are different approaches used, but again they all have one thing in common: they're a complex way of imitating static linking.
I hope that someday soon the industry at large wakes up to the fact that static linking is just the most sensible thing to do. Yes, the binaries might be slightly larger, but that's well worth it if it means we can avoid "DLL hell" or the "shared object shitshow", and if we can avoid complex package managers, and most important of all, if we can avoid this goddamn "containerization" bullshit.
Now there may be problems when it comes to certain libraries, because they use highly restrictive licenses like the LGPL that effectively force the use of dynamic linking if you don't want your code to be infected by a viral license. The solution to this is simple: don't use poorly licensed libraries. Stick with libraries that use static-linking-friendly licenses like the MIT or BSD licenses, for example.
A whole lot of problems would be solved if we stopped with all of this dynamic stupidity and just went back to static linking.
How do you know your compilers aren't hiding their secret actual-compilers, you Ken Thompson wannabe?
Really? So shere is the source code for this "snap"? In fact:
In fact, to the extent Microsoft champions "open source", this open-source is about taking advantage of source code released by others without Microsoft releasing any of its own. When I see Microsoft releasing source code under a free license (say BSD) for a significant program originally created by Microsoft (Skype, their web browser) I will believe them.
I believe each snap is sandboxed by default.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Because gullible's like you trust anything. I bet you're running windows?
This particular snap install is NOT safe to run. When you run "snap install skype" in a terminal you get a warning that skype is packaged using "classical" isolation and may escape the sandbox and make unrelated system changes. In order to install, you have to add the --classic flag to indicate you understand the risks. I did not install skype.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
As someone who actually uses Skype for Linux, I can say definitively that it's a torture device meant to make Linux users experience excruciatingly unpleasant interfaces, Windows ME stability, Windows Vista levels of bugs, and pointless slowness for what is actually no more than a frame around a website. The Skype for Linux from before MS bought it was a far better, more feature-full and reliable product... since the MS purchase it has only been progressively sabotaged. The several years it went without an update were nice, but ever since updates resumed it gets more painful in each release.
This space intentionally left blank
In fact, this is Microsoft trying to support a dangerous undercurrent in the Linux world of walled gardens and insecure vendor-controlled installations.
If something is wrong in libc, libm, or libgtk Microsoft should get it fixed upstream, not ship their own incompatible version. Do you really trust them to backport every future bugfix after their fork?
yes, snap is a app container. it runs in its own box.
An IM client which spies on me and logs all my conversations for Microsoft without so much as a decent search function for me to view my own archives. There's no reason to use Skype outside of a business environment where you have to do so, there are plenty of open source alternatives and there are plenty of more popular things if you can't get your friends to switch.
What makes them "safe to run"? Is the software that they run in the container open source and can be inspected? If not, how do you know it is "safe to run"?
They think it's safe to run because Microsoft said so. You know, just like they said their "operating system" (hahaha) is "safe to run". There's no real reason to believe a word out of the mouth of anyone who works or worked for Microsoft. Also, you know how Skype is used by "millions of users" to make "free" calls? Yeah, well, if you're not paying for a service, you're not the customer, you're the PRODUCT. In the case of Free/Libre Open Source Software, the motivation is generally altruistic. The ability to legally fork software if the owner/maintainer ever gets greedy prevents malfeasance of the type Microsoft routinely practices.
I wonder if they've fixed the White Screen of Death that the latest version of Skype for Linux in the repos suffers with (start program, receive white screen with basic window controls and nothing else). I've rolled back to an older version and blocked updates for the package to work around it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
We've farted, can you tell yet?
And Skype was already available as a Flatpak available on flathub (and easily installable from the gnome-software GUI).
The summary could have mentiomed that (and, of course, that Slack and Spotify are also available as Flatpak's from Flathub)
I think he meant that its safe to assume they can be run, not that their code is safe as in non malicious.
"I tried $linux_distro on my laptop, but it couldn't find my audio or Wi-Fi, and when I took it out of suspend, it stayed on a black screen. Others on forums mentioned the same problem without a solution." What's your next course of action for a friend who tried and failed to defenestrate his laptop?
What,s the real Cost of running MS Skype? Im sure linux user are all watching what its doing, what data its collecting and sending back to headquarters..fill us in..
Jack of all trades,master of none
To save people trying to find the link to the official page, here it is: https://snapcraft.io/skype/
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
but no thanks. Either release a proper application or go home. You can shove your "Snaps" where the sun don't shine...
"Skype has turned to snaps to ensure its users on Linux, are automatically delivered to its latest version upon release."
Are they also going to release a new snap any time one of the static linked dependencies are updated as well?
"And with snaps' roll-back feature, whereby applications can revert back to the previous working version in the event of a bug" ...and also previous unpatched versions of static linked dependencies as well.
I think I like normal packages with shared libraries I can ensure are up to date whenever any app or utility relies on them to run.
Twinstiq, game news
The fact that they bundle dependencies are what makes me feel they're unsafe. I can't rely on snap packages to have up to date dependencies.
Twinstiq, game news
While Microsoft has long been viewed as an enemy of the Linux community -- and it still is by some -- the company has actually transformed into an open source champion.
Misrosoft is an Open Source "champion" like Russia is a democracy. Anyone buying into either claim, and I say this with all possible respect and deference to my fellow man, (or woman, as the case may be,) is a FUCKING MORON. Microsoft is STILL a closed-sourced, anti-competitive cabal of miscreants whose software is DESIGNED to lock you in, and risk your safety for the sake of the COMPANY'S bottom line, and always has been, and always will be. They didn't just turn over a new leaf, and magically change their business model. They just found a different way to squeeze money out of people that's a little more subtle than their old way.
The difference between old, 1980's era and 1990's era Microsoft, and the scummy company of today, is that the 80's & 90's era Microsoft would slit your throat in front of your children and rob you, then leave you bleeding to death as they watch, horrified, and the Microsoft of today heards your kids into another room, and shows them shiny toys and amuses them while another Microsoft person gives you a lethal injection that still kills you, just as fast or faster than you'd have died with your throat slit, but instead leaves your corpse looking neat, clean, and peaceful. In the end, you still get robbed, you still die, your kids are left to fend for themselves in the world, but Microsoft gets to trick morons into thinking that somehow they've changed.
Anything they do today as far as I'm concerned, should be met with that quote from Adm. Akbar, "It's a TRAP!"
No. No. NO. After all the evil they're directly responsible for in this world, that name, that company does not get to be rehabilitated. Their record is indelibly stained with all the blood of the innocent they've spilled to become obscenely rich, rich with STOLEN MONEY, illegally gotten, and that stench cannot be shed. And that would be true even if they really WERE trying to reform themselves and mend their evil ways. No. Microsoft has NOT, as far as I know, changed which set of laws their company is organized under, nor, have said laws changed. As a publicly traded, for-profit corporation, they have a LEGAL OBLIGATION AND FIDUCIARY DUTY to their shareholders to MAXIMIZE PROFIT. Given their company's history, and the frankly villainous and evil stench that surrounds their name, their logo, and every person employed there, there is simply no way they COULD make as much money doing what their marketing assholes want you to THINK they're doing, so they're, therefore, demonstrably and obviously NOT.
If you're making this case and you don't work for Microsoft, you're worse than the morons who passively buy their bullshit. You're an idiot, because you're helping the cause of evil, and you're not even getting paid to aide and abet the crimes of Microsoft. Dumbass.
Also, again, I don't buy that they're trying to be helpful to the OSS community. They're trying to get people to use Skype either because it has a premium feature they're hoping people, (including Linux users who would otherwise be lost to them, and largely immune to their money-grubbing efforts,) will use and then PAY THEM, or they're planning on getting people hooked, then discontinuing the service for Linux users, or they get advertising revenue from Skype on Linux... either way, it's nothing I'll ever touch.
The last time I downloaded and installed Skype was BEFORE Microshit bought them out, after which I closed my account and deleted the software. I have no interest in paying Microvomit either directly, or indirectly, for their shitty so-called "software," which as far as I'm concerned, is malware masquerading as software.
Lastly, let me remind the community, (as if it needs reminding of this,) that one of Misrofuckt's techniques is Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. That's where they trick morons into "t
The summary is by a slashdot submitter of the same name as the article author, who says all you need to do to be an open source champion is... not even release the source to your program now available on a very limited set of linux distributions.
Looks like all that slashdot user does is submit his own articles on betanews, in fact. So much for slashdot.
(On another note, plural's do's not's get's apo'strophe's.)
You do know Snaps were not created by Microsoft, right?
ideals
Ideas??Ideologies?! ideal what??
Diverse Double Compiling. Why do you ask?
Snaps are containerised software packages that are simple to create and install. They auto-update and are safe to run. And because they bundle their dependencies, they work on all major Linux systems without modification.
https://snapcraft.io/ [snapcraft.io]
Ah, so they've recreated PC-BSD .PBI packages for Linux!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! :)
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
They won't do anything bad with your data. Promise. Yeah, right! I don't want MS storing all my personal and contacts' information anywhere - they are the least secure mainstream OS in the world. I was a long time Skype user on LINUX. Recent versions want access to all kinds of private data on my system so I have purged Skype from my main computer (LINUX) and my MACs as well. There are plenty of other free, secure, multi-platform and unobtrusive alternatives out there, many of them browser-based so you don't need to install anything at all.
Classic is not much different in terms of isolation that if you installed the DEB package of Skype from repo.skype.com. IOW, it no less as unsafe as any other package you install. You either trust software from the download source or you don't. It's the same decision you have to make running any third party software.
That being said, you can pass the "--jailmode" flag to the snap install or try commands and the application run under strict confinement, but probably not very well if at all.
This snap for Skype is created by Microsoft. The flatpak Skype package was not created by Microsoft. It was just the Skype deb package that extracted the files from the compressed archive within it and repackaged it as a Flatpak. It's already out of date
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Awesome Naming by Microsoft, too.
Where in the constitution does it say that? ;)
How DARE you mod down this post for merely disagreeing with ideals. Slashdot is an OPEN FORUM where every man is allowed to express his opinion.
Amen.
So you claim the right to express your opinion but wish to deny those who moderate the right to express theirs? Hypocrite.
Or did something change and Microsoft is not the bad guy anymore?
https://we.riseup.net/riseuphelp+en/skype
i think that declaring MS "open source champions" is a bit unreasonable.
While Microsoft has long been viewed as an enemy of the Linux community -- and it still is by some -- the company has actually transformed into an open source champion.
Bullshit. Microsoft and it's IP trolls continually attack and tax open source vendors. Nothing has changed but the marketing strategy.
Yeah, well, if you're not paying for a service, you're not the customer, you're the PRODUCT.
So on DuckDuckGo you're the product? On Tor you're product?
I see the good folk an MS have provided a marketing spin to publish straight onto /. "open source champion", "wildly popular" hardly an independent or realistic view of MS or Skype - there's just a little bit to much hype going on there, maybe now farcebook isn't accepting fake news they thought they could dump some on /.
I co-host a nationally syndicated radio show and my co-host recently added Discord as a call in option to the show. It became apparent that Discord is actually got a edge on Skype. I'm no fan of Microsoft nor am I a fan of Discord. Both are proprietary pieces of crap I won't touch with a 10 foot poll. I'm going to be starting a new tech show soon and we won't be opening the lines to Skype users and we'll probably avoid Discord too. We'll probably do SIP as we already have it setup and a toll-free number and offer a HTML5 video stream in button on our web site. We certainly have the bandwidth for it although I'm not really sure how well it'll work in practice- but we're going to give it a try.
I use skype on linux (Mint distribution) to communicate with co-workers. Screen sharing between linux and windows clients was horribly broken for at least a year. When they finally released the "sype for linux" preview, it fixed screen sharing, but introduced all kinds of glitches with sound quality and webcam support. In fact, the latest update no longer even recognized my relatively new Logitech Webcam, and a quick google search will show that this is "a known problem"...
I am glad that Microsoft has released a new version, and is pushing out updated every 1-2 weeks, but I really wish they would focus on building stable software that actually works, instead of more UI changes or added features.
And robots are your plastic pal who's fun to be with.
'actually transformed into an open source champion', 'wildly popular' etc. etc. No. Microsoft has stopped throwing chairs, issuing Halloween memos and is now burrowing into open source with a view to subverting it since open source is a threat to revenue and shareholder value.
You have to ask yourself, each time, there's some breathy announcement, followed by the shill commentary below it, 'Do I trust Microsoft? For me, the answer is and will remain, 'no'.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
So I finally went through a major hoopla to upgrade my system so I could run a more recent version of Skype (so mom could keep calling me and get her remote support).
There was absolutely no reason to update (ok, a system update is never wrong) as the old version of Skype worked just _fine_ (well, after a lot of tweaking) and the only reason it stopped working was M$ throwing all the toys out of the pram and refusing to let the old version keep running.
The new Skype wont take my camera (Cheese likes it plenty fine) and the incoming sound is so scratchy and choppy that I have major trouble understanding peoples' speech.
First up against the wall etc...
Sometimes people don't want to see how the older free software movement (a social movement which advocates for the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software) and the younger open source development methodology are philosophically different (1, 2) and that philosophical difference leads to radical differences on the ground. Objections to raising this difference tend to take the form of trying to make it look like any reminder of software freedom (which open source enthusiasts don't like because their philosophy was founded to reject software freedom) is being somehow rude. But time after time we see this difference in action and this article promoting Skype is no different.
Here a proprietary (non-free, user subjugating) program—Skype—is being advertised for use on what might be a free software system (unfairly referred to as a "Linux" system). No reminder of anything to do with software freedom except in a place where the proprietor thinks they can benefit from the conflation the open source philosophy was designed to achieve: "While Microsoft has long been viewed as an enemy of the Linux community -- and it still is by some -- the company has actually transformed into an open source champion." tries to get you to think of "open source" but not to the extent that one would wonder if even that group's weaker philosophy is going to be available to Skype's users by running Skype. No mention of GNU as in a GNU/Linux operating system; any mention of GNU is far too strong a reminder of the software freedom you're not getting with Skype. Better to stick to distracting technocratic details that are irrelevant compared with the profound problems of running Skype, details like the software's packaging. And to reinforce the notion that open source advocates will often abandon their own developmental philosophy if it gets in the way of a powerful proprietor, we get a quote from Canonical, an open source supporting company, further encouraging users to install the non-free communications software.
Nowhere will you find a reminder that not only is Skype non-free software (and that this alone carries horrible implications) but Microsoft is an NSA partner, and Microsoft changed Skype specifically for spying. Apparently the "seamless user experience" Canonical championed and the "high quality experience" Microsoft talked about doesn't include respecting a user's software freedom, their privacy, or the security of their computer.
Digital Citizen
A box in the computer? Does it come with it's own RAM?
It's a msmash article, what did you expect?