Great, did you use it on your mobile devices (smartphone/tablet) or on your PC? How does it perform with Wifi and not cable connection? Did you use it for long distance video calls, for example between continents? Is it available for non-Android platforms?

It's hard to find a reliable and open source video communicator these days. There is Skype that's quite reliable but it's not open source but it's the most popular, there is Google Hangouts but it's not as popular as Skype. Skype is and it's available for all platforms and it's even installed on some smart TVs. Tox looks like a good alternative but last time I tried video quality was poor and there is no mobile app. I also tried to make video calls via SIP protocol using linphone and multitude of other programs but video quality was just too bad.

What about Pigeon? Coming bundled with mint distro, very useful cross-platform.

@average user: I use Hangouts on my phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop. It works. I used it a lot when my daughterand son-in-law were hospitalized in Thailand, with spotty wifi. It could get a little jerky now and then, but not bad. We also tried Skype under the same conditions, and it was unusable. They were using a tablet and an iPhone, we used various devices, mostly my Android phone. Another big draw for me is the ability to conference up to 10 devices with Hangouts. We've had 5 or so in family conferences, with no loss of quality.

I've used Pigeon for text chats for years, but I never knew of it to have video capability. Haven't used it for awhile, though.

I'm not so paranoid as to worry about the NSA eavesdropping on me and my grandkids. I do keep email accounts out of the USA, though, just in case. I expect the ability to encrypt video to be available in the not-too-distant future anyway.

And yet another year w/o Asterisk ?

I am aghast as to how Skype, closed source mal/spy ware offering owned by M$, could possibly win this poll in a Linux forum. Especially by such a landslide. Yikes!!

Agreed, that makes my skin crawl, I refuse to use it. I switched to Linux years ago to get away from MS, not re-embrace them.