Oh come on, they ignore people who complain about the iOS client too. They just ignore everyone and refuse to iterate or innovate. Personally, I don't understand why people pay to use them when Google Hangouts has so many better features and a clearer UI.
Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
351–360 of 483 posts
Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for letting us know it was dead. I haven't realised it for the part few years of daily usage.
I used Thunderbird daily for the better part of a decade until about 3 months ago. It's nothing personal against the project, which is currently the best serious desktop mail client available afaik. It's simply that Mozilla doesn't care about it anymore since everyone uses webmail now. Thunderbird is doing feature releases about once a year now [0], and Mozilla has pulled most (all?) of its full-time developers [1].…
What makes an email client so difficult to write? I don't mean this to sound insulting, I just really don't understand where the complexity is. It seems like you should be able to get to a point where it is feature complete and all development efforts shift to maintenance mode. Or maybe I don't understand what's been going on with Thunderbird and perhaps it's been "done" for years now.
Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
#353Skype 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…
As the responses in this thread demonstrate, there's plenty of cause for both pessimism and optimism. So let's all choose to be optimists, then get on with improving our own little piece of the world.
Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most things worked far, far better 10 years ago than today. Apparently this is progress. Sigh. If you wanted to look up a business on your phone you'd have to call directory enquiries - did that "work better" than your smartphone? Did you prefer RealPlayer over HTML video? Was WAP better than LTE? Was Windows XP the pinnacle of OS design? Yeah, sometimes progress is a double-edged sword that outdates some things we…
> If you wanted to look up a business on your phone you'd have to call directory enquiries - did that "work better" than your smartphone? Bad example. I didn't need a smartphone for this task because there was a real live human being, who brought to the task all of the adaptability and intuition that modern systems lack. I didn't need Yelp, or Google Maps, or even the entire name of the business I was looking for. "I…
> I didn't need a smartphone for this task because there was a real live human being, who brought to the task all of the adaptability and intuition that modern systems lack.
OK, my example was simplistic. I want to find the best chicken tacos in San Francisco. I can't call directory enquiries for that - I have go find reviews. Then call to make a reservation at the place, then find driving directions of how to get there, somehow. In a paper road atlas? Am I having to advocate for the benefits of the internet on Hacker News?
> Realplayer sucked but it was about a thousand times more reliable than the current compatibility crapshoot
Well of course it was, it only had to run on one platform. Compatibility is a lot easier when that's the case. Today we have HD video being played on mobile devices in your pocket. I can't remember the last time I ran into a compatibility problem with online video.
> I used to be able to take a supersonic flight across the country, without having my body inspected via millimeter-wave radar.
That's a political decision, not a technical regression.
> Has anyone set foot on the moon in your lifetime?
No. Can I load, on demand, stunning satellite photography of planets orders of magnitude further away than the moon, on my phone, on the bus to work? You bet.
Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
#355Skype on Linux is far inferior recently. Mostly due to the fact that the Linux version has been somehow abandoned. It haven't received updates since at least 1 year. For example, one recent change is that when someone sends a picture, on Linux you are sent a link to it, where you have to go to the Skype website and login in order to view it (and login each time you open a link). Sometimes it's a resized version of th…
In the end to the end user "linux sucks" because skype sucks on linux.
most of the people I know, regardless of what platform they use seem to think that skype sucks. especially if they tried to use it on their mobile phones. We all put up with it because there are no real competitors, and the open source alternatives are all pretty lacking as well
Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Personally I prefer uMatrix - it lets you enable specific things across domains instead of a binary allow/deny, and allows global versus per-domain or per-subdomain rules; e.g. I might be fine with one site collecting metrics but not globally.
Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
#357Earlier 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.
Not to mention Google Talk was a chat system first and foremost. Hangouts is a funnel to get you to use their browser (still don't understand why it ships as a plugin) and social network first, chat application second.
The plugin is not required if you use Chrome.
Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
#358Skype 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.
[deleted]
Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
#359Obviously... It's Microsoft...
Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Tedious disclaimer: my opinions only, not representing anybody else or my employer. I work at Google, not on hangouts) These problems are largely resolved by using chrome. Pop out any tab into its own window, notifications will work reliably, the security model is far stronger, and most important of all: when one tab crashes, it's an independent process so it can't take any other tab with it. I use this every day wi…
I'm sorry, but I use my 32GB of RAM for useful work. Once I upgrade to 64GB I'll consider allocating half of it for Chrome.
I used to make this joke when I put 32GB of RAM in my workstation, to devote 16 to Chrome.
At some point, life started imitating art.