Skype 1.10 Linux Alpha Restores Video Calls Support

[GreatEmerald]

Just use the web version. That's had working video all along. I just pin it in a browser tab so I don't close it by accident and the HTML5 desktop notifications work well.

Uh, no, it never had video calls. Not on Linux. It only had audio calls. Again, the Linux Alpha client is just Chromium pointed at Web Skype with a notification icon.

As for the alternatives, I've only tried Jitsi and Tox and they never worked too well here...

Any suggestions? Discord? Ring? Linphone? Which one do you use?

I usually just stick with appear.in for multiperson video conferences. The downside of it is that the echo cancellation doesn't work that well, and there sometimes is desync (fixed by refreshing the page).

[GreatEmerald]

Back OT, has anyone tried spreed.me? How does it compare to Jitsi meet and Skype (under Windows/OSX)?

I have. I don't think it's any better than appear.in, really, aside from the ability to host it yourself (which might make it better, if your server is near all the peers).
As for Jitsi Meet, I never got that to work with my own channel names, it just gives a server error, oddly enough. Oh well.

[uid313]

You did mention couple of other religions. Religions people buys burning apple and samsung mobile devices. From China you get better quality mobile products like Xiaomi mi4c that is the best android phone that you can buy with 112 usd. When you have 150 usd, best is Leeco Le2 x620 16GB.

Using Linux is not religious, Android is based on Linux and IOS to BSD. Technically Linux is very good os, see:

No, Linux is a shit operating system.
Most Linux users use Ubuntu and are suck with 6 month old software. Only the nerdiest of the nerds use anything other than Ubuntu.

On Linux you can't do shit like video call with normal people. Because people use Skype, and you can't do video calls using Skype on Linux. Now you say, well you can use this other open source software like Ekiga or some random obscure software that nobody heard of. Yeah, technically it supports video calls, but in reality people use Skype, and that is what you will have to use if you're going to talk with them. Good luck having a video conversation with people if you have to tell them to go download some stuff just to talk with you.

Linux works terribly, it has experiences even with things like Copy & Paste. You open a Qt application and try copy and paste something into a Gtk application, and don't work, especially not if you close the application you are coping from before you paste.

Linux is upon legacy stuff like a C monolithic kernel. This in contrast with Windows who uses a modern C++ microkernel.

Things just work on Windows, whether it be games or Netflix. Windows have awesome gaming performance.
Linux barely have any games, and the games that exist are worse performance because of the drivers and the architecture.

Windows has tons of amazing technology, like DirectX. The .NET Framework (thankfully Microsoft have blessed us with the open source release of .NET Core for Linux). Then there is Active Directory, Group Policies and PowerShell which lets you access pretty much everything.

Yeah, I use Linux. But Linux users are the worst, they say Linux is great and Windows sucks. They live in some kind of fantasy world.

[DrYak]

Uh, no, it never had video calls. Not on Linux. It only had audio calls. Again, the Linux Alpha client is just Chromium pointed at Web Skype with a notification icon.
{...}
I usually just stick with appear.in for multiperson video conferences.

To dig into the tiny details : it boils down to Audio/Video technology on the web.
Initially web.skype.com required a binary proprietary plugin to enable Video / Audio calls.
Of course, Microsoft being Microsoft, this was only available for windows.

Then Microsoft ended up realising that things like HTML5 / Video, and WebRTC have been happening all around (the technology used by talky.io, appear.in, the webversion of jitsi, etc.)
So microsoft decided to take this route on web.skype too.
The problem, again, is that Microsoft is Microsoft. They had painted themselves in a corner with their EEE stupidity.
Whereas the whole universe (Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.) use WebRTC for real-time audio/video streaming (as used by talky.io and co), Microsoft's Edge uses a different technology called ORTC (Object RTC).
So the HTML5 web.skype.com basically only works in Microsoft Edge.

I'm guessing the whole "Video calls now starting to work in Skype Alpha", and "currently only working between skype alpha clients", is due to the fact that they have rewritten part of their code to use WebRTC API instead.
thus webRTC users can call other webRTC users.
and ORTC users can call other ORTC users, or users with an ORTC compatible plugin in their browser.

but at the current state of things, WebRTC and ORTC users can't establish a direct peer-2-peer video link, due to divergent technology (Microsoft has done too much "Extend" on their work on Edge, and didn't pay attention to what the rest of the world is doing).

Might also be why currently only 1-to-1 chat are supported. (establishing multiple peer-to-peer connection is complex).

Maybe after a while, again, they'll have a genius moment and realise that the rest of the world has been using a server to handle such cases (jitsi has a nice opensource one that is used by several project including talky.io).
Each chat attender establish a single link to the jitsi server (using whatever technology is available. Usually webRTC, but microsoft could take the time to establish a ORTC support), and the jitsi server takes care to route the audio/video stream around.
(luckily, currently everyone uses RTP streams - just like XMPP, SIP and H323 - so that task isn't that difficult).

[Passso]

Bollocks!

Apple is the biggest tech religion and then BSD users are a close second for piousness.

Third place is a toss-up between Amigans/Commodore die-hards and Linux users, maybe.

Debian XFCE is the most rigorist religion here. Even more than mormons. When a Debian XFCE user takes a break he does not offer himself a coffee : he slaps his own ball with a brand virgin Qwerty keyboard and says mantras "You are my universe I will give you my life A-oooooom".

[Passso]

No, Linux is a shit operating system.
Most Linux users use Ubuntu and are suck with 6 month old software. Only the nerdiest of the nerds use anything other than Ubuntu.

On Linux you can't do shit like video call with normal people. Because people use Skype, and you can't do video calls using Skype on Linux. Now you say, well you can use this other open source software like Ekiga or some random obscure software that nobody heard of. Yeah, technically it supports video calls, but in reality people use Skype, and that is what you will have to use if you're going to talk with them. Good luck having a video conversation with people if you have to tell them to go download some stuff just to talk with you.

Just to mention it : Microsoft made http://web.skype.com so basically not only you are a troll, but a stupid troll.

[Passso]

No, Linux is a shit operating system.
Most Linux users use Ubuntu and are suck with 6 month old software. Only the nerdiest of the nerds use anything other than Ubuntu.

.....

Yeah, I use Linux. But Linux users are the worst, they say Linux is great and Windows sucks. They live in some kind of fantasy world.

Sorry for my last post I cannot delete it. I just understand your whole point was ironic so I gave you a "like". Sorry !

[uid313]

Just to mention it : Microsoft made http://web.skype.com so basically not only you are a troll, but a stupid troll.

I am aware of web.skype.com, and use it myself.
On Windows with Edge you can do video calls.
On Linux you can only do text chatting, video calls does not work.

[uid313]

Sorry for my last post I cannot delete it. I just understand your whole point was ironic so I gave you a "like". Sorry !

No, I was not ironic.
You got these mindless Linux fanboys going around saying that Linux is great and Windows sucks when in reality Linux is full of flaws and deficiencies and Windows 10 is a great operating system.

I use Linux though. I am just sick of lying fanboys.

[uid313]

You have never heard of rolling release model. MS is copying that for win10 and many linux distros are rolling releases and have been many years. Another feature ms is copying is virtual desktop. Still you can not tune the win desktop way you like. With Xfce and Whisker menu you can

Yes, I have.
But most Linux users don't use rolling release model. Most Linux users use Ubuntu.
People with other distributions are a tiny subset of a tiny subset.

Yes, Linux has had many features before Windows, and yes Microsoft is implementing some of those features.

You have never heard of Google Hangoust or Jitsi and many other than are multiplatform sw.

Yes, and nobody uses those.
You going to have a business meeting and people will use Skype, you can't tell them, oh you guys should get Hangouts.
You're going to talk to a girl, then she's on Skype. You can't tell her oh, you need to get Hangouts, lol. Good luck.

Yes, Hangouts, Jitsu and dozens of other software exist. In the real world, nobody cares. Use Skype or you're not doing video calls.
It's like if you're at this party, and you talk to a girl, and she wants to add you on Facebook, and you tell her you don't use Facebook and that she should get Google+.

Windows works terribly, after boot it takes 1GB RAM, Xfce 200MB. Linux apps takes little memory so no need to close like in windows.

Bullshit. Linux apps takes tons of memory because you run instances of C, Python, GTK, Qt, etc, and tons of different fragmented libraries that does the same thing.

Xfce is useless, it is not a real desktop. Then I can say I can run Fluxbox. Nobody gives a shit if you can run on 200 MB. You want a real machine for real work.
You can not run Ubuntu with 200 MB, and you're not going to have much fun with 1 GB RAM either.

Linux distos works out of box. Windows is no use without network to get drivers. You can do custom linux kernel, in windows you can not to anything to make it better.

Nobody does a custom Linux kernel. Nobody cares about custom kernel. There is no reason to do a custom kernel.
Welcome to the real world.
"You can do a custom linux kernel", what kind of idiotic argument is that. Yeah, you can do a custom kernel, but you can do a video conversation with a girl on Skype? No, you cant!

Netflix works with Chrome. In Debian testing Xfce both dx9 games and native games have awesome gaming performance. Wine-staging gives you similar fps as in windows.

Netflix just works on Windows.
On Linux, well Netflix kind of works if you use the right browser, or maybe some User-Agent header spoofing or maybe compile from source.
DirectX 9 is about 15 year old. Yeah, Linux play Tetris too, wow, hooray.
Similar performance if you have the right graphics card with the right device driver. With most graphics card and most device drivers the performance is lower.

In Debian you have many alternative for those, like for directx: wine, wine-staging and gallium nine. In windows only one.

Yeah with support for 15 year old DirectX 9, lol.
I might as well pick up a old PlayStation 2 from the scrap yard.
Gallium Nine, does anyone even use that? It's not even mainlined upstreams.
Nobody cares about your dozen of inferior alternatives. I rather have one good solution instead of 10 inferior ones.

You are typical uhbuntu user, do not know about rolling releases, netflix with chrome and linux gaming. Learn to use google.

You are a typical Linux fanboy. This is why I never tell people that I use Linux.
Linux is shit for gaming. No gamer uses Linux.