Live data from Hacker News

Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

nickforall.nl

211–220 of 483 posts

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#211
post #141
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> like Signal

Or ...Telegram (search in that page for "Telegram (secret chats)")

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#212
post #103
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.

They are trying hard now to brink Hangouts back from the brink.

you know, i stopped using hangouts not long ago. my mobile internet is sometimes really flaky and about 3 month ago messages didn't show up anymore after sending them. just nothing in the history for hours.

eventually (up to 8 hours later) they did show up, mostly at the correct time as well, but that wasnt good enough for me.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#213

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…

Most things worked far, far better 10 years ago than today. Apparently this is progress. Social everything means we can't visit a website today without calls to a billion external domains. Phones are doing the same as they're mini-tablets that suck at actual phone calls. Operating systems have taken on mobile centric (and the hideous flatten everything) design that is broken paradigm for a 15" laptop or 24" desktop s…

> we can't visit a website today without calls to a billion external domains

NoScript really brings this into visibility. I don't mind the domain running scripts. But the 10+ other domains that needs to run a script - sigh. My wife keeps asking my why I put up with it - it's quite simple; I decide if the page I'm about to visit is worth all the extra crap running and tracking me.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#214
post #99

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…

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.

I agree. The app had fewer features and was pretty tight back then.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#215

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.

A lot of the codebase at Google is pretty darn good. Certainly nowhere close to approaching a technical debt singularity where further progress becomes impossible.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#216
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Is there any way to use it to start calls, except for being a Firefox user?

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#219

If the claim that the Linux client is no longer able to join calls is true, I think the Skype team really needs to respond. Microsoft has been doing all sorts of cool things lately and it's odd that the Skype team hasn't been a part of this movement toward a modern, multi-platform world. In my little corner of that world as the owner of an agency which spends money on Skype credit every day and uses Skype for a healt…

Telegram already has all the pieces needed to add voice chat on all the platforms it supports. I wouldn't be surprised if eating Skype's lunch is part of their monetization plan.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#220

My biggest disappointment with the business version the fact that it is impossible to turn off the pop up notification when somebody logs in or out from Skype. Before you post me URL from the support website, non of them works, everybody in the office (10+ engineers) tried to disable this but no success. The only way you block that is to put yourself into do not disturb mode, but than non of the legitimate notificati…

Do you mean Skype for Business aka Lync? We use SfB extensively at my workplace, and I don't see these log in/out notifications at all, even when I want to!
Post reply on HN