Microsoft Reportedly Releasing A New Skype For Linux Soon

[laceration]

Originally Skype was great. It undercut all the big telecoms + was reknown for being unpenetrable w/ no back doors. Then it sold out + become just another corportae asset. First to ebay, now to MS. Now I'm trapped. I either stay with this old tired poorly preforming shit complete with ports to the NSA or get a crappy cell phone plan. The promises of the Internets somehow went astray.

[Adarion]

Yeah, important reminder:
Do not even think about running the skype executable without sandboxing it with things like selinux or apparmor or running it under a dummy skype-only user account.

Yes. But on the other hand, at least with SELinux, you are running a NSA infested Linux. They say it is safe...

Sadly a lot of my friends use skype. I also see the benefits of a videochat or at least a free of cost via internet voice chat program. Some of my pals living in foreign countries, so that would actually be quite good.
But Skype? It was horrible when ebay bought it, didn't get any better and finally with MS things got even worse.

[Caledar]

Yes. But on the other hand, at least with SELinux, you are running a NSA infested Linux. They say it is safe...

Sadly a lot of my friends use skype. I also see the benefits of a videochat or at least a free of cost via internet voice chat program. Some of my pals living in foreign countries, so that would actually be quite good.
But Skype? It was horrible when ebay bought it, didn't get any better and finally with MS things got even worse.

Run it in a virtual box.

[finalzone]

Yes. But on the other hand, at least with SELinux, you are running a NSA infested Linux. They say it is safe...

Not sure it was intended a humour, the source code is available on http://oss.tresys.com/repos/refpolicy/archive/ under GPL+ license. NSA no longer hosted the source code since 2008.

[randomizer]

The Windows client is advancing? I waste up to half of the allocated time for my regular meetings dealing with issues with that client. Random changes to the selected microphone and speaker in the middle of a call and screen sharing failing to start correctly or simply failing partway through a session are particularly annoying issues. I just use Skype for instant messaging myself. I'm still on 4.2.

[sarmad]

Too late. We have already switched to Google Hangout.

[curaga]

Yeah, important reminder:
Do not even think about running the skype executable without sandboxing it with things like selinux or apparmor or running it under a dummy skype-only user account.

Run it in a virtual box.

Fat good will that do, when MS records all calls made on Skype. You're kinda missing the point on communications software.

That is not to say there's no malware in the binary, there likely is, but to me my calls are more important.

[pejakm]

Unfortunately, there really is no real alternative (and I've tried every fcking piece of Linux audio/video chat software existing).

[M@yeulC]

Well, we should better try to come up with an alternative : http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf (to learn about skype's trustworthiness...)

[danboid]

Mumble

If you don't require video, Mumble is a good alternative to Skype.

Mumble Tips:

1 - Use headphones

2 - Reduce the audio input amp. setting to 1x (should be the default)

3 - Change Transmission type to continuous (ditto)

I've always had way too many issues with WebRTC, hangouts, XMMP, SIP etc