Microsoft Rolls Out A Preview Of The New Skype For Linux

[cthart]

I've finally bitten the bullet and uninstalled Skype after the latest "upgrade" broke it for me -- using an old AMD desktop here at work. I have a new machine on its way but Skype won't get installed on it.
The iOS version is now also virtually unusable -- I can't find any way to sign out from it so that *I* can control when I am and when I am not online. For "Skyping" with family on different continents I've now started using Facebook Messenger which works well -- much better video quality too.

Good riddance Microsoft.

[schmidtbag]

I'm very unhappy that it's not available for MIPS, man, I mean my router wanted to skype me and now he can't!

I have to agree with Hi-Angel here. Though I don't see any reason to port Skype to PPC (does anyone actually still use a PPC PC for desktop purposes?), a version for ARM/ARM64 could potentially be just as useful as an x86-64 build. This would allow ARM-based tablets, smartphones, Chromebooks, and robots (think in terms of telepresence or school projects) running Linux to use Skype. I figure those 4 categories combined, in addition to hobbyists (running things like a Raspberry Pi or Odroid), involve roughly the same amount of desktop/laptop Skype Linux users.

[Hi-Angel]

I have to agree with Hi-Angel here. Though I don't see any reason to port Skype to PPC (does anyone actually still use a PPC PC for desktop purposes?), a version for ARM/ARM64 could potentially be just as useful as an x86-64 build. This would allow ARM-based tablets, smartphones, Chromebooks, and robots (think in terms of telepresence or school projects) running Linux to use Skype. I figure those 4 categories combined, in addition to hobbyists (running things like a Raspberry Pi or Odroid), involve roughly the same amount of desktop/laptop Skype Linux users.

Please, let's not use for education or scientific purposes Microsoft's communication software, unless they open source the server to allow anyone to run own Skype server.

[schmidtbag]

Please, let's not use for education or scientific purposes Microsoft's communication software, unless they open source the server to allow anyone to run own Skype server.

But, it's ok to use it for personal use?

I don't see anything wrong with anyone who wants to use Skype for these things. Obviously, there may be better options, but there is nothing about Skype where I feel someone would regret using it for education or scientific purposes, assuming it fulfills their needs (which they would find out very early on).

[Hi-Angel]

But, it's ok to use it for personal use?

I don't see anything wrong with anyone who wants to use Skype for these things. Obviously, there may be better options, but there is nothing about Skype where I feel someone would regret using it for education or scientific purposes, assuming it fulfills their needs (which they would find out very early on).

You might think now it's fine, given they released a newer client of Skype for GNU/Linux — but for how long it wasn't true? They could as well abandon GNU/Linux client. And this is a problem with any proprietary software: today everyone is using something for free and it works fine, but tomorrow the company charge a money for that or abandon your platform. Open source doesn't protect you from that either, but it makes it a non-hopeless situation. E.g. you can run your own server, may be fork a project.

This is besides that some of users knowing the software is open source might want to try improving it, and they do have means to do so. If you're a CS student, you might even base a student paper of kind "How I spent the summer improving <app_name> client".

[schmidtbag]

You might think now it's fine, given they released a newer client of Skype for GNU/Linux — but for how long it wasn't true? They could as well abandon GNU/Linux client. And this is a problem with any proprietary software: today everyone is using something for free and it works fine, but tomorrow the company charge a money for that or abandon your platform. Open source doesn't protect you from that either, but it makes it a non-hopeless situation. E.g. you can run your own server, may be fork a project.

Sure, but why would MS ever do that? Remember, Skype was once developed by an independent company and that company made a Linux version. When MS bought them out, they improved upon the Linux version. Surely, they wouldn't do that if it wasn't profitable. I do not see Linux support being dropped in the foreseeable future. Even if it was clear that support would be dropped, why would anyone depend on it?

In the end, it doesn't matter if it's closed-source or not. There are much better alternatives to Skype for private use. There are better alternatives for something that is easier to administer. There are probably cheaper options than Skype for making phone calls. The main reason people use Skype is because of its servers, proprietary transcoding, and general widespread use. There are a lot of products out there that are closed-source and mediocre despite being really popular, but they remain used because either too much media depends on it, too much hardware depends on it, or, because too many online users use it. Things get real complicated when you can't just simply swap for an incompatible alternative.

[Hi-Angel]

Sure, but why would MS ever do that? Remember, Skype was once developed by an independent company and that company made a Linux version. When MS bought them out, they improved upon the Linux version. Surely, they wouldn't do that if it wasn't profitable. I do not see Linux support being dropped in the foreseeable future. Even if it was clear that support would be dropped, why would anyone depend on it?

They abandoned the GNU/Linux version, left it to slowly rot (I don't use it nowadays, but I've read things like inserting images stopped working, and something alike; there are many complains of forums). If that's not enough: when I had to use it and something didn't work, I tried reporting a bug. You know what: they closed channel for reporting bugs in Skype. You can guess why it is: the Linux part of Skype forum was flooded with complains, but nobody was interested in fixing anything, and even though the forum become the last communication channel from Skype users — nobody was answering to reports.

Btw, you know what's really interesting: I reported back then a question on forum "How to report a bug?". And I just wanted to link it, but couldn't find through Google. Alright, I just tried to login to my account on the site, and it, for some reason, created a new account! I don't see in my profile any questions I asked. Great. This is the third account Microsoft forces me to for Skype — 1-st one was 2 years ago when I tried restoring a password from my old account, and found that every single "restore password" thing on the site redirects to restoring a password for MS account. Which is not the one I've used in Skype. I really hate them.

In the end, it doesn't matter if it's closed-source or not. There are much better alternatives to Skype for private use. There are better alternatives for something that is easier to administer. There are probably cheaper options than Skype for making phone calls. The main reason people use Skype is because of its servers, proprietary transcoding, and general widespread use. There are a lot of products out there that are closed-source and mediocre despite being really popular, but they remain used because either too much media depends on it, too much hardware depends on it, or, because too many online users use it. Things get real complicated when you can't just simply swap for an incompatible alternative.

Yes, it does matter. I think I better off link to my older comment from another thread to not repeat myself.

*irrelevant text I left because forum don't want to save "reason for editing" otherwise and I'm really annoyed*

[RussianNeuroMancer]

This would allow ARM-based tablets, smartphones, Chromebooks, and robots (think in terms of telepresence or school projects) running Linux to use Skype.

Sorry, but besides couple of boards like RPi, there is no proper drivers for this hardware. Usually there is only one available kernel per-device paired with closed source blobs that supports nothing but Android. Good luck with making this works under desktop Linux (and, no, chroot under Android is not solution for obvious reasons).

Moreover, even BayTrail/ChertyTrail-based tablets begin to work properly just a few kernel releases ago. And some important Skype-related perhiperials still won't work - like cameras and headset jack detection (AFAIK jack detection works only on Dell 5855, and maybe few other BYT/CHT-based tablets) low-powered suspend S0i3 doesn't work too, on everything, including Broadwell, Sky Lake and Kaby Lake in laptops. We have such situation with all needed sources available (either in Intel's GitHub account or code dumps by devices vendors, like ASUS, Lenovo and others) but nobody can or want make it work (certainty not Intel executives, otherwise this would be done years ago).

You can only image how much it worse in ARM world. So nobody cares about Skype desktop client binary for ARM.

[carewolf]

Last time I checked video calling didn't work on Firefox/Chromium using web.skype.com.

With Firefox: I couldn't even click on video call, unless I changed the user agent, and when I changed the user agent and made a video call, the session would never establish and it would just disconnect.

With Chromium: the audio worked but I would get a black screen for the video.

These days I just install Skype through flatpak and it's much easier, but I wish I didn't had to use the piece of shit that is Skype.

Fucking Microsoft and their bullshit.

Ehmm.. The Skype Linux app IS Chromium. It is just a Chromium fork called Electrum set up to load the web.skype.com. That is ALL it is.

[Hi-Angel]

Sure, but why would MS ever do that? Remember, Skype was once developed by an independent company and that company made a Linux version. When MS bought them out, they improved upon the Linux version. Surely, they wouldn't do that if it wasn't profitable. I do not see Linux support being dropped in the foreseeable future. Even if it was clear that support would be dropped, why would anyone depend on it?

Remember you asked? Today's news: Skype support is dropped for any AMD CPUs older than 5 years GNU/Linux only. It's an official comment somewhere here, on 28th page (sorry, I can't figure out how to link the comment directly). Quoting:

Could you please check if you have a processor without SSSE3 instruction set support? (mostly 5+ years old AMDs). If that is the case, the system is unfortunately unsupported by Skype.

The backstory, is that after update Skype shows just white screen on AMD CPUs. Now, here's an interesting thing: it seems that they made a new Skype for Windows too in 2016. It's rational to assume the new Skype have shared codebase, but they don't have such requirement for Windows.

Microsoft just officially sabotaged GNU/Linux. Worth noting, the thread have other simple complains that is a matter of minute to fix, but they don't get addressed. The SSSE3 one is one of them by the way.