Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

nickforall.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 483 posts

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#141

Post by taejo »

lnalx wrote: post #110
simgidacav wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking on this topic. You know what's the problem with alternatives? Nobody uses them. I'm seriously pissed off by this. I recently saw how all my friends moved to Telegram, and this is nice. But for instance my company has daily skype calls, and I have to get skype for those. I eventually decided to give it up on my (Linux) laptop and get the calls only on Android, where it still sucks, but at least it works…

> I recently saw how all my friends moved to Telegram, and this is nice. All my friends are on Whatsapp, and this is not nice... I'm going to try to convert them to Telegram., not easy.

I don't understand why people on HN are still recommending Telegram. It's not open, the crypto is highly questionable, and messages are not encrypted end-to-end by default (and not at all in groups). Use one of the apps that gets a full score in the EFF's Secure Messaging Scorecard [1], like Signal.

[1] https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#142

Post by akerro »

lawl wrote: post #111
StavrosK wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that have a native app for the desktop? I'm tired of everything using Electron and requiring hundreds of megabytes of RAM for simple stuff :-(

https://tox.chat/clients.html

and much more details https://wiki.tox.chat/clients#features

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#144

Post by pjmlp »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #128
vanderZwan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when someone tries to innovate in this live group chat space, they get bought out[0]. I doubt we'll see the features of Talko in Skyp any time soon, and I expect whatever creative buzz they had going over at Talko will surely be killed by the forced reintegration into the Microsoft bureaucracy. [0] http://www.talko.com/

They /let themselves be bought out/; big difference there. If their ideology was to create a proper Skype competitor, they wouldn't go for the 'quick buck' / become millionaires overnight.

You are quite right, I don't understand the HN/Reddit mentality that only the buyer is to blame when FOSS projects get bought.

After all they also took the money.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#145

Post by mschuster91 »

agumonkey wrote: post #55
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #31

Skype worked far, far better 10 years ago than it does today. From all indications I've seen, Skype is getting dramatically worse all the time. From a personal standpoint, it crashes for me multiple times a day and I can rarely get group calls working on the first try. Often Skype requires a force-quit and then it crashes twice more when it is being restarted. This is on Mac and Android. Fun fact: I have a friend who…

The android client is also a bit random. Notifications pops when they feel like it. Some upgrades change for different kind of wrong.

Also it doesn't support logging in with Facebook accounts.

Edit: why the downvotes? It's a feature finely supported on desktop clients, and it does not work on Android - so in order to use Android Skype, I'd have to create a "pure" Skype account (with its own password!), and re-import all my contacts.

For me, that's a bug that has seen no activity for over 3 years.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#146

Post by LoSboccacc »

lawl wrote: post #109
LoSboccacc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tbf maintaining anything proprietary under linux is a chore, with the ABI changing every year for no reason and yet having to support users having all kind of version combinations. I can see how a company would hate devoting that much resources for pleasing a smaller user base.

> with the ABI changing every year for no reason and yet having to support users having all kind of version combinations. What? That is simply not true, the Kernel never breaks userspace. And "version combinations" are solved by linking statically.

gnome breaks userspace, kde breaks userspace etc. skype is not just linked against the kernel after all, but a whole lot of different components

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#147

Post by topbanana »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #137
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #31

Skype worked far, far better 10 years ago than it does today. From all indications I've seen, Skype is getting dramatically worse all the time. From a personal standpoint, it crashes for me multiple times a day and I can rarely get group calls working on the first try. Often Skype requires a force-quit and then it crashes twice more when it is being restarted. This is on Mac and Android. Fun fact: I have a friend who…

>Fun fact: I have a friend who worked for Skype in Prague. He said the codebase is a true horror, an extreme mess, and that soon it would "reach a singularity" Being a developer, I read this and think, what developer thinks any existing codebase is NOT a mess. It's the number one developer complaint ever. They (we?) all think we know a better way.

I work on two systems at the moment, and they are in very good condition

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#148

Post by anon4 »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #137
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #31

Skype worked far, far better 10 years ago than it does today. From all indications I've seen, Skype is getting dramatically worse all the time. From a personal standpoint, it crashes for me multiple times a day and I can rarely get group calls working on the first try. Often Skype requires a force-quit and then it crashes twice more when it is being restarted. This is on Mac and Android. Fun fact: I have a friend who…

>Fun fact: I have a friend who worked for Skype in Prague. He said the codebase is a true horror, an extreme mess, and that soon it would "reach a singularity" Being a developer, I read this and think, what developer thinks any existing codebase is NOT a mess. It's the number one developer complaint ever. They (we?) all think we know a better way.

As someone who has seen several LARGE commercial software projects, there is a definite gradation from "it's hard to comprehend these layers of abstraction, but after a few days I kind of understand how they interact" to

    // X - uncommented on 1.2.03 to fix bug
    // Y - commented again on 3.2.03 because it broke stuff
    // if (condition)
    {
       ... logic here, half of it commented out ...
    }

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#149

Post by chtfn »

I recommend trying jitsi (meet.jit.si) for conferences with features. Ring is a new one, that looks very promising for secure multiplatform p2p one-on-one communication. (ring.cx) On my phone, I use CsipSimple with my trusty VOIP provider Diamondcard.us.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#150

Post by LoSboccacc »

sangnoir wrote: post #114
LoSboccacc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tbf maintaining anything proprietary under linux is a chore, with the ABI changing every year for no reason and yet having to support users having all kind of version combinations. I can see how a company would hate devoting that much resources for pleasing a smaller user base.

> maintaining anything proprietary under linux is a chore, with the ABI changing every year for no reason Is Skype a special snowflake to the extent that it's an impossible task? Skype-on-Linux's problem are caused by interface changes with the server API, not the ABI. Recompiling isn't rocket science.

recompiling isn't. packaging for every distribution, edge and not and building autoconf for all of them and ifdef all over the code?

not rocket science either, but that stuff does carry an increased cost

Post reply on HN