tox and alternatives: skype requires pulseaudio now

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3131

1clue, I think teamviewer can do that. It has some funny licence though, so you most likely would have to read it carefully to determine whether you can use it free of charge or consider it commercial. AFAIR it targets remote support, and in this case person providing support has to buy it and his clients are free to share his license. I don't know how good it really is though.

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2014 10:56 am Post subject:

mv · Watchman Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 6747

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

I didn't mean to hijack the thread. In fact shortly after my previous post I made my own thread here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-994108-highlight-.html

I'm not opposed to commercial software. I write some of it. I would prefer open source because of the flexibility, but if something fills the void I'm happy with that.

It's a big debate for me whether a VM with an antique proprietary OS would mess up my system more than having pulseaudio on it. I never really understood why it had to be that complicated just to get a @#%@# sound card to work. It's so obtuse I don't see why any distros adopted it.

Edit: I also am extremely dissatisfied with skype's CPU usage. It sucks down more and more CPU and there's no reason for it. Webex uses minimal resources and is better in every way, other than the monthly license fees.

depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3509

Here's an odd question... May as well check for feasibility.

How about an ALSA plugin that presents the pulseaudio API? Better yet, have the plugin feed straight into dmix.

There is already alsa-plugins-pulseaudio which lets native ALSA applications work through pulseaudio. How about the other way around?

I realize that it's at least a SMOP, but is it technically feasible?
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mv · Watchman Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 6747

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

It would help to eliminate the necessity of having any poetteringware on your system.

depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3509

DaggyStyle · Watchman Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5909

there it begins, skype 4.3.0.37 doesn't support alsa anymore, just PA!

see: http://blogs.skype.com/2014/06/18/skype-4-3-for-linux/

nice going MS!

OT, any alternative which is cross platform?
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Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2014 4:41 pm Post subject:

You're a bit late: tox and alternatives: skype requires pulseaudio now.
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DaggyStyle · Watchman Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5909

duh! missed that thread. my bad!
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mv · Watchman Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 6747

It seems that microsoft now started to force the new skype protocol: <net-im/skype-4.3 cannot connect anymore :evil:

charles17 · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2008 Posts: 3664

Chiitoo · Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2014 4:14 pm Post subject:

mv · Watchman Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 6747

Chiitoo · Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 10:20 pm Post subject:

Mmmh, added a comment over there, though I'm not sure it makes sense to keep the version around even if it works for me and those who use the 'merged' accounts.

I have a feeling it's not going to last fer long...
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Chiitoo · Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2014 3:08 pm Post subject:

Sure enough, it did not last.

A couple of days ago, Skype logged me off, telling me that it was either due to a connection issue, or my password was changed elsewhere (way to get paranoid people go into pancake-mode!).

Trying to log in again would get me the following: “Sorry, we didn't recognize your sign-in details. Please check your Skype Name and password, then try again.”

Trying to purposefully enter a wrong password would say the password is incorrect, so I guess this is indeed the end. What a good way to tell me about it, Microsoft. It could have been said clearer, I'd imagine...

Even so, I can still use those “microsoft accounts” to connect via KMess (perhaps because of the http fallback).

On other news... I tried some more Tox clients using the overlay from here.

I'm still not a fan of the GUI style that nearly all of them have adopted. Would like to give it a shot to see if I could create something myself (though I doubt it!).

Out of net-im/toxic, net-im/venom, net-im/blight, net-im/tox-gui-qt, net-im/qtox, and net-im/utox, the tox-gui-qt and toxic are probably closest to something I might see myself using, though tox-gui-qt seems it might be the most incomplete one too. As for blight, it's the other different looking one I guess, but it doesn't run at all at the moment (or I can't drive it).

Have not tested calling, but µTox and qTox should have both, audio and video.
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ExecutorElassus · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 10:08 pm Post subject:

I'd suggest also following another alternative: there's an app for iThing/Android called WeChat that is fantastic as a communication app. The video and audio compression beats (at least on my Android phone) that of skype.

It has a web-based interface that allows for chatting via QR-code scanning. I don't know if the web interface also includes voice comms, but if it does, I'd highly recommend that as your VoIP solution.

Because I just tried to get skype to work, and that there is some bullshit

Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 4:15 pm Post subject:

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

If you just need VOIP then there are lots of options that don't necessarily involve Linux.

I use Magic Jack. It has a device that can be either a USB dongle or a stand-alone network entity. For this one, it lets you call anywhere in the USA from anywhere in the world. That may or may not suit your purposes but I'm saying it just to get the idea out, surely there are equivalents for almost every nation.

It has these modes:

Android app. You register your cell phone and run the app, when people call your MJ number it rings your cell phone. This uses a lot of batteries.
Presumably there's an iPhone app.
Network entity: You hook up ethernet, usb (for power) and a plain old telephone to the device, it registers itself and the phone works as you would expect.
Computer device: Hook the USB up to your computer, run the app (stored on the device) and use your computer's built-in audio as a headset.

I don't know if the computer mode works with Linux. I use it as a stand-alone device.

Cost is about $20 a year, unlimited calling. In the context I use it, it's a bargain.

All that said, I'm really really eager to hear about something that has all of this:

Voice
Text chats with groups
Screen sharing among multiple participants
Face to face video chat with multiple participants
A sharable/secure whiteboard app with recording
Prefer peer-to-peer with my own server for initial contacts and recordings.

AFAIK this does not yet exist.

Skype has always sucked up way too much power on my systems. One laptop regularly goes into thermal shutdown during screen share. That's not cool.

charles17 · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2008 Posts: 3664

Naib · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 8:20 pm Post subject:

Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 8:44 pm Post subject:

Interesting. I also see that Mozilla has added a button to Firefox 34 to provide account-free video chat using WebRTC. Mozilla calls this feature 'Firefox Hello'.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/where-firefox-hello-button

I have it in Firefox 34.0.5 (I had to drag the Hello button from Customise | Additional Tools and Features) but have not got around to trying it yet.

EDIT: OK, curiosity got the better of me and I'm trying out Firefox Hello as I type this. It works quite well. I didn't bother creating an account; I just clicked on the Email button to e-mail the automatically-generated URL to someone, and he clicked on the URL in the e-mail he received, which opened Firefox on his laptop and rang Firefox on my laptop. We tried both video and audio-only conversations, and both worked well, although the bandwidth at my end is not good recently (I really need to complain to my ISP) so I disabled my Webcam and continued with just audio. Firefox Hello is not as polished as Skype, but I reckon that, if Mozilla keeps working on it, they could end up with a good product.
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OpenRC udev elogind & KDE on both.
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Tae_kyon · n00b Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 71

Just a sidenote because someone earlier stated that Skype now depends on systemd: it does not.

I have Skype 4.3 on an openrc Gentoo system working without problems.

Pulseaudio does not require systemd. So, Skype 4.3 requires pulseaudio, not systemd.

Of course, if I wanted to use skype without pulseaudio this would be a big pain in the a..
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Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2015 9:14 am Post subject: