Hi Slackers,

I am going on a trip for work and it will be the first extended period of time away from the wife and young kids. I want to find an easy reliable method of video chat to keep in touch. There seem to be a lot of choices out there (see for instance the link below) but it's not clear which would work better/best on a slackware linux system. I have slackware 14.0 running on a netbook at home which I envisage the family will use for this while I have slackware 14.0 on my work machine, an ultrabook.

Installing the google talk plugin (using rpm2tgz as root creates a working slackware package out of the rpm package google provides) gets it up and running well on the home WLAN but some colleagues say it isn't so good ``in the field'', whatever that might actually mean.

I am wondering if any of the options out there is a smarter choice for a standard slackware full install setup. I don't use the KDE Desktop, rather xfce (although I use several KDE utilities like k3b, okular and kile) -- maybe there is a tool in the standard install that works well? Otherwise, have any slackers found any other options (e.g. at http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fed-up-...-alternatives/) work very well -- or very badly -- on a slackware linux system in particular?
I couldn't find any similar threads that address this.

I am pretty busy at the moment and so don't have a lot of time experimenting, hence my appeal to you all.

Cheers,

Michael

If you have multilib installed, Skype is pretty good. A lot of Windows users use it and I use it to call my parents (who have Skype on Windows) and everything works very well from sounds to the webcam.

Agreed. Skypes a pretty good program if you don't mind a closed source, 32-bit only microsoft product. I've used it to have video chats over crappy hotel WiFi connections and it holds together pretty well. It's by far the most widespread video chat software, so most people are familiar with it.

I'm sure you're going to end up using Skype. However, I recommend qutecom, it works reasonably well and is FLOSS.
http://trac.qutecom.org/

Really, you should just install them all and see how well they work for you.

I am stuck with Skype, because everybody uses it. However, if this will be the only 32bit application and you do not want to "contaminate" your Slackware64 with 32bit libraries, you may try the package from zerouno:

http://www.slacky.eu/asche64/pkgs/in...er=16&pkg=2111

Agreed about using skype, however you may want to look into google hangouts. One may simultaneously video chat with up to 8(?) others and when I tried it a while back it actually worked, no fuss. Sorry, I'm on a tablet, must be brief....

cheers,

1 members found this post helpful.

That's not a reason to use it. There are FLOSS alternatives than "everybody" can install.

Sure, if you can convince them to use it, which requires them convincing everyone they skype with to switch, which requires all those people get their skype buddies to switch, and on and on...

Like it or not (and I'm definitely in the "not" category), skype is the de facto standard.

Adam

Or they could install the programs side by side, and then there would be no need to switch. However, convincing other people to switch away from skype would be a good thing.

skype is no standard, it never was, is, or will be. The SIP protocol is a standard, however.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session...ation_Protocol

So, take your "de facto" and ...

Apparently you don't know what a "de facto" standard is. SIP may be a standard du jour, but skype is the de facto standard for chatting.

unfortunately, it is

i am sure there are, however not many people will want to go through the trouble of it just to be able to chat with a single person (me). Following this logic, "everybody" can install Linux as well...

Maybe then you'll know who your friends really are ...

By that logic, wouldn't I be a bad friend for not installing skype to chat with them?

Adam

Particularly, I'm avoiding Skype like the plague. Jitsi looks nice.

my parents and i skype with each other using google talk.