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Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

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Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#161

Post by ElijahLynn »

Stop using Skype. The NSA allegedly collects all Skype traffic anyways. Do you really want that?

"The full capture of voice traffic began in February of 2011 for “Skype in” and “Skype out” calls—calls between a Skype user and a land line or cellphone through a gateway to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), captured through warranted taps into Microsoft’s gateways. But in July of 2011, the NSA added the capability of capturing peer-to-peer Skype communications—meaning that the NSA gained the ability to capture peer-to-peer traffic and decrypt it using keys provided by Microsoft through the PRISM warrant request."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/newly-published-n...

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#162

Post by mcs_ »

46 active contacts and 12 blocked account in my Skype 4.3.0.37 (2014 Skype and/or Microsoft Patents Pending)

Family: Wife (mac), Mom(ubuntu) and Sister(win) All - Family = work or business (i can safely say that 90% are OS from MS).

Do I want all those contacts in my slack ? No i don't.

Do I want to change to another very powerful chat system? Well, sometimes connect sqlite3 to find a conversation is not really what i want to do but the problem is to use chat system as storage for important communication so, No I don't what another shitty chat system.

My "rest folder" contains current work, future work, very good and bad work experiences from the past and maybe unplanned new jobs.

People are still there in green every morning cause they may want support or want to give jobs and after they pay they tends to use less email and more (shitty) chat systems.

In my case skype is only for work and i don't what to confuse the clear skype sound in my phone with something else that the work. Remove those contacts today means lose money tomorrow, i cannot remove that program and it is immediately installed after vim and git.

So after declaring to be a slave of skype like many others, I don't ask microsoft to change it, to fix it, to improve it or do it more cool or modern. I ask for my freedom: We need public, usable and having a sane license API to build something _better_ around it and remove that green icon from the status bar or my GNU/Linux Mint.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#163

Post by ahjones »

davedx wrote: post #158
xiaoma wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google talk circa 2008 was a lot nicer than Hangouts is now, too. The resource usage was lower, the UI was nicer and it was more responsive. It's really a shame they killed it.

Yet Hangouts is much lower friction and generally easier to use than Skype! What good alternatives are there to Hangouts? Preferably something that doesn't require flaky browser plugins.

I like Zoom (http://zoom.us/). I used to use Hangouts, but it consumed a lot of CPU. The free Zoom account allows you to have up to fifty people in a room for forty minutes, or an unlimited length call with just two participants.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#165

Post by continuational »

davedx wrote: post #158
xiaoma wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google talk circa 2008 was a lot nicer than Hangouts is now, too. The resource usage was lower, the UI was nicer and it was more responsive. It's really a shame they killed it.

Yet Hangouts is much lower friction and generally easier to use than Skype! What good alternatives are there to Hangouts? Preferably something that doesn't require flaky browser plugins.

There's Firefox Hello: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/hello/

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#167

Post by ElijahLynn »

746F7475 wrote: post #121
exo762 wrote: post #78

Microsoft is doing a service to all of us by destroying Skype. Nobody should use it anyway from the moment MS has bought it with sole purpose of handing data over to NSA&Friends.

Wanna code an alternative then

Other than the obvious, Hangouts, which is closed source and probably just as vulnerable:

https://appr.tc/ https://github.com/webrtc/apprtc

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#168

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

mrmondo wrote: post #126
pritambarhate wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past year, the Mac client has also become very fragile. If I quit the Skype App without signing out, next time login keeps failing unless I go to the library folder and delete my Skype user profile directory. Quite shameful for such a high profile software.

I do have my own suspicions that a certain company deliberately degrades the quality of any software they release for platforms other than their own.

Considering the quality of the software they release on their own platforms, I suspect this may not be true.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#169

Post by benbenolson »

davedx wrote: post #158
xiaoma wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google talk circa 2008 was a lot nicer than Hangouts is now, too. The resource usage was lower, the UI was nicer and it was more responsive. It's really a shame they killed it.

Yet Hangouts is much lower friction and generally easier to use than Skype! What good alternatives are there to Hangouts? Preferably something that doesn't require flaky browser plugins.

After using Hangouts for years now, I've become sick and tired of it, and have finally found an alternative. Unfortunately, this is only for the text/image chat functionality, but it's a very good replacement: https://telegram.org/

It was on the front page of Hacker News just a couple of days ago, and that's where I found out about it. Much nicer clients, open protocol (so you can even make your own clients), reliable, and many more features than Hangouts make this a much better alternative.

For voice and video, however, I haven't found a good alternative that is easily accessible to people that don't want to set things up on their computer. Hangouts will just randomly not work for me, depending entirely on random chance, and I still can't find anything more convenient than it.

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