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How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

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Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#151

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

> which meant a lack of security (allowing all apps full access to spy on the entire screen)

I really do not care if an application that I installed can "spy" on my screen. It can execute arbitrary code on my machine. My security concerns no longer exist.

I really hope developers will abandon wayland, policykit, rtkit, dbus, systemd, and the rest of the overkill that now unnecessarily introduces bugs and complexity into the Linux desktop. My laptop shouldn't need an entire distributed system to let me click some buttons in a GUI.

Maybe the problem is we let corporations like RedHat and Ubuntu tell us how the desktop should work (it's their developers introducing all this crap). Maybe it's time to start over.

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#152

Post by dfawcus »

aidenn0 wrote: post #145
cluoma wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same audio issues here. Zoom always wants to set my mic level to 0 and change the default output source for whatever reason. My last company used Teams which I had a much better experience with on Linux (gnome+xorg) than Zoom.

Teams is terrible on Linux for me, but which thing is broken changes from version to version. A few examples: - My USB headset only works for the first call. Restarting teams let's me use it for one more call - joining a meeting from the calendar spins forever. Doing it from the chat list works fine - incoming calls don't ring my Linux teams, but ring everywhere else - the settings for setting which device to use rar…

Or that it presumably makes use of override_redirect, as it escapes the X WM decorations, and draws its own windows not fitting in to the style of one's WM.

That is then made worse if one uses the ability to pop out a chat in a new window, such that it is very difficult to see the popped out chat.

I've resorted to always running the web version in a Chromium instance, that being the only way to make its UI usable.

Oddly enough, the macOS client is a bit more usable, but I've not tried popped out windows there.

Over and above that, it seems to be a bandwidth hog while just sitting there watching an idle chat/team/channel.

Something I'd not use if it hadn't been adopted as the corporate "solution" at $EMPLOYER.

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#153

Post by kxra »

amatecha wrote: post #146
kxra wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know why it was modified? I think hackernews stripped off the .md for some reason, but if you submit the URL with an anchor like https://write.as/hash.md#title that seems to preserve it

It was probably submitted incorrectly, my guess

When I tried to resubmit the correct URL, it was stripped again. Does it work for you?

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#154

Post by asddubs »

funcDropShadow wrote: post #13
suby wrote: post #4

I still cannot run a Wayland session on my machine w/ an nvidia 3080 with the latest drivers. It either fails to boot (KDE) or runs at about 15 FPS (Gnome). It seems a little unreasonable to be this mad at a company for not supporting an environment that doesn't work for the vast majority of hardware out there. Especially given that you can just use Zoom within Firefox.

I've been using Zoom on Gnome almost daily in the last three years. I've basically no problem with video conference itself. Video just works for me. But audio is a never ending story. Zoom randomly selects other audio devices, when I quit one video session and start another. Sometimes, I have to to quit zoom and start it again. Sometimes I have to disconnect my table speaker/microphone to be able to use it in zoom ag…

on the mute button, there's a tiny arrow you can click to select your audio device and microphone. you shouldn't have to restart zoom for this (but yes I have had this issue too although it seems to have gotten better).

another thing zoom does to me is mute my mic whenever i switch a session/join a breakout room, but there's an option to disable it controlling the mic in the zoom settings to fix that one

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#155

Post by dathinab »

I'm not surprised, I mean they didn't even manage to have proper browser support.

Like last times I had to do interviews from Teams, Slack over Google Meet to (best experience) Jitsi everything worked more or less on chrome, Meet worked also on Firefox, Jitsi flawless on Firfox.

And Zoom?

Randomly decided to not deliver audio, at all. No way to fix it, no reconfiguration of inputs, while others did work at the same time, so probably not a browser bug either.

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#156

Post by peakaboo »

ddtaylor wrote: post #148
pmontra wrote: post #134

Two questions. 1. Why not the .md URL for everybody? 2. Is this really a problem with Zoom or one with Wayland and the Linux distros? I mean Fedora switched to Wayland in 2016 and the screensharing API was added only in 2018. A rushed deployment? Then maybe the Wayland team should make a list of the applications that must absolutely work with Wayland and support their vendors to release a correct implementation, not…

> 2. Is this really a problem with Zoom or one with Wayland and the Linux distros? I mean Fedora switched to Wayland in 2016 and the screensharing API was added only in 2018. A rushed deployment? I use OBS on Fedora 35 and overall it's been really nice. I use the Flatpak version of OBS and it uses Pipewire. When I want to screen record an OS-level dialog box pops up asking me which screen/window I want to share and t…

I share my desktop screen in Google Meet using pipewire as well, and just like you say, I get a choice which screen or window I want to share and that's it.

Wayland is very stable these days.

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#157

Post by dathinab »

suby wrote: post #4

I still cannot run a Wayland session on my machine w/ an nvidia 3080 with the latest drivers. It either fails to boot (KDE) or runs at about 15 FPS (Gnome). It seems a little unreasonable to be this mad at a company for not supporting an environment that doesn't work for the vast majority of hardware out there. Especially given that you can just use Zoom within Firefox.

> the vast majority of hardware

3080 is definitely not the vast majority of hardware.

The vast majority of hardware is:

- older

- a lot of Laptop integrated graphics

- a lot of less expensive graphic cards

Like, I just went and took a look at the price of a 3080 in Germany, no joke it's 1.500€+ on Amazone and Ebay. That is 50%+ more then most people can/want to afford to spend for there whole computer!

In the steam survey it has 1.16% usage, and as a game related Survey it's already biased in it's favor as all the "simple office work only" systems won't even show up there.

I wouldn't be surprised if for Zoom relevant usage it's more like 0.2% (as it includes many more "office focused" systems then gaming systems) or so. So kinda irrelevant?

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#158

Post by peakaboo »

suby wrote: post #4

I still cannot run a Wayland session on my machine w/ an nvidia 3080 with the latest drivers. It either fails to boot (KDE) or runs at about 15 FPS (Gnome). It seems a little unreasonable to be this mad at a company for not supporting an environment that doesn't work for the vast majority of hardware out there. Especially given that you can just use Zoom within Firefox.

I run 300 fps with a nvidia card in counterstrike using wayland and gnome, so perhaps it's not the driver that is your problem.

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#159

Post by sodality2 »

JonathonW wrote: post #87
exciteabletom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How not to code an HTML " rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML">HTML page by hand.

In next week's episode, how not to write your URL-detection regex.

You can't parse [X]HTML with regex: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#160

Post by CoastalCoder »

nine_k wrote: post #56
funcDropShadow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Zoom on Gnome almost daily in the last three years. I've basically no problem with video conference itself. Video just works for me. But audio is a never ending story. Zoom randomly selects other audio devices, when I quit one video session and start another. Sometimes, I have to to quit zoom and start it again. Sometimes I have to disconnect my table speaker/microphone to be able to use it in zoom ag…

Even though my experience with Zoom under Linux is much smoother, I can confirm the "random audio device" issue; it may be daunting. And the inability to accept command-line arguments is a choice, not a technical problem. Another fun bit: the same version of Zoom on the same hardware (T470, i5) offers virtual background support under Windows, and disables it under Linux. The machine has no dedicated GPU to have drive…

I've had luck by adding OBS to the setup. OBS connects to the real webcam and microphone, does whatever magic I want, and exposes the results as a virtual webcam that Zoom uses.

I eventually stopped using OBS because it was overkill, but it worked very well.

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