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Re: undefined

#121

Post by Dylan16807 »

colanderman wrote: post #38
mediaserf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to instability and memory/race condition issues with the new sykpe app, I've been using Pidgin and the skypeweb plugin: https://github.com/EionRobb/skype4pidgin/tree/master/skypewe... This works well for me since most of my skype traffic is chats, but I have to load the new skype app for calls.

Nitpick, I assume by "race condition" you mean "used lots of CPU". This is a common colloquial conflation, but race conditions [1] (which are not generally identifiable without aid of a debugger and the application's source code) and high CPU usage are unrelated concepts. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_condition

It's a subset of race conditions to be sure, but I think it's reasonable to look at a thread that gets stuck in a do-nothing loop while the app continues to run and guess it's probably the fault of buggy multithreading and bad luck on the timings.

Re: undefined

#122

Post by johnnyhead »

stryk wrote: post #55
pgaddict wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. We've been using Skype for internal communication for a very long time. Back then it was the only option that worked on all the OSes we need (Linux, Windows, Mac), had all the features, and it just worked. But the Electron app is just damn terrible. The message layout is super inefficient - it can display maybe half the messages compared to the native client. If you click somewhere, it un-expec…

What reliable alternatives would you suggest?

I would recommend Wire ( https://wire.com/en/ ). All mobile and desktop OS and web too. In my experience it's reliable and private and the company behind it is extremely open and supportive of its users.

I am not affiliated, I just like it.

Re: undefined

#123

Post by hackbinary »

eric_h wrote: post #71
dpark wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a nitpick. These are entirely different things and calling high CPU usage a "race condition" is really confusing and misleading. Do people actually do that? Where did that come from?

> Where did that come from? Maybe because it makes your machine's fans sound like a race car? Honestly this is the first I've heard of this usage as well.

And also, please can we refer to computers as hard drives. Especially desktops.

Re: undefined

#124

Post by acveilleux »

danirod wrote: post #11

As others are saying, the new Electron-based app is so bad on so many levels. Recently it has been failing to deliver incoming messages. They don't even appear, it just causes confusion to anyone trying to have a text conversation. Plus the lack of features that versions for other platforms have. At this point it's just better to use web.skype.com on a browser tab. I find that more reliable than the Electron client.…

That's still true with web.skype.com being down for 3 days ealier this year for me (wouldn't render in chrome.)

Re: undefined

#125

Post by sangnoir »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #45
danirod wrote: post #11

As others are saying, the new Electron-based app is so bad on so many levels. Recently it has been failing to deliver incoming messages. They don't even appear, it just causes confusion to anyone trying to have a text conversation. Plus the lack of features that versions for other platforms have. At this point it's just better to use web.skype.com on a browser tab. I find that more reliable than the Electron client.…

That they can mess up even text chat is unbelievable. These are problems in networking that have been solved for decades. An undergraduate should be capable of writing a text chat program with 100% accuracy. This is pathetic.

> An undergraduate should be capable of writing a text chat program with 100% accuracy

That maybe true, but I assure you that program will not scale to millions of messages. The reason so many companies "get it wrong" isnt because their developers are less skilled than graduates. Syncing M:N state at scale is hard.

Re: undefined

#126

Post by Dylan16807 »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #46
will4274 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every router I've bought in the last decade has had UPnP, and I don't look for it. Citation needed on the "difficult to find"

The last router I bought (a UniFi Security Gateway) can do UPnP, but the (non-beta) UniFi Controller doesn't expose that option. You can enable it through the commandline on the router though. I'd certainly call the option "difficult to find". ;)

"Difficult to find the setting on your non-consumer router" is different from "difficult to find a router that has it".

Re: undefined

#127

Post by krrrh »

hawski wrote: post #37

I was wondering what to use for video calls with my father. He has a mobile core 2 duo machine (one of Dell's micro desktop PCs). Skype stopped working as stated in the title. I went with Facebook Messenger on Firefox, but video from his camera is very jerky. It looks like it hangs for a 1s every 1.5s. For me it's an indication of a performance problem - video is converted to a WebRTC friendly format and it's slow. I…

Maybe buy a couple of used iPad 2s for $100 a pop and use them exclusively for FaceTime. It seems to work far better than anything else for video chats, even on 5-year-old hardware. The power of native apps is real.

Re: undefined

#128

Post by someSven »

user5994461 wrote: post #107
cm2187 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is what is so complicated. Chat apps aren't exactly rocket science (pretty much the opposite) and have been around since the 90s. Only the live video is more complicated but that doesn't seem to be the main problem with the linux app.

You could start by defining "linux" app. Linux is not really a thing. It's a mess of numerous operating systems. Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, redhat, slackware, all themselves available in different incompatible editions. I pity developers who have to support desktop applications on linux.

They only need to do a part of the work. The other part is the repo maintainors job. These many distros also boil down to a few fundamental distros.

Re: undefined

#129

Post by paraboul »

user5994461 wrote: post #107
cm2187 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is what is so complicated. Chat apps aren't exactly rocket science (pretty much the opposite) and have been around since the 90s. Only the live video is more complicated but that doesn't seem to be the main problem with the linux app.

You could start by defining "linux" app. Linux is not really a thing. It's a mess of numerous operating systems. Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, redhat, slackware, all themselves available in different incompatible editions. I pity developers who have to support desktop applications on linux.

Not exactly. The only things you need to handle are :

- An old enough glibc (glibc is backward compatible)

- static link as much as you can (I know this is against the unix way, but the only way to workaround most of the compatiblity issues). This is pretty much what macOS apps do by shipping .framework within .app.

Beside this, QT and GTK will pretty much always be available.

Re: undefined

#130

Post by mental_ »

kbody wrote: post #92
mental_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using the new Skype For Linux app since their first alpha release and never experienced any of those problems. It lacks features but was never unstable for me.

Same here, until the recent weeks. Suddenly it started having issues where messages don't show up until I restart the client, while they show up fine on my mobile. It's certainly a business move to make Linux experience worse, I doubt MS can't put some dedicated engineers and have a proper app.

Considering the Android app was just updated and it looks terrible, I don't think there's a conspiracy theory against Linux.
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