Telegram?

davidjharder

WetGeek Last I looked Telegram was mostly text chat and voice calls.

Jitsi is open source and can run in just a browser
https://jitsi.org/

The repository version of Jitsi is a little outdated.

Staudey

My friends and I switched from Skype to Riot. It has support for conference calls and video (via the aforementioned Jitsi), but it has some rough edges to be honest.

[deleted]

Never tried Telegram or Jitsi, but really like Wire which is available in the Software Center:

https://wire.com/en/
"Wire is 100% open-source and independently audited "

Wire Messenger Review:
https://restoreprivacy.com/wire-messenger/

Have used it for years, and it's been great for video and voice calls.

Available for Linux, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows & Browsers.

WetGeek

[deleted] Have used it for years, and it's been great for video and voice calls.

Of all the options I've seen so far, this looks like the best candidate for our purpose. I'm going to email my son and see if he's interested in trying it. I know for a fact that he doesn't care much for Skype, and I'm happy about where it's made. Thanks for the referral!

[deleted]

https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/24/21234254/telegram-messaging-app-group-video-calling-security-usability

bigrammy

WetGeek Not sure if you use Android/Google or not but duo (Googles Video Calling App) as a web based version too so no need to install software other than maybe chrome which is what I use.
https://duo.google.com/about/ It's also cross platform by the way and works with the iPhone etc if they install the app which is available from crapples app thingy. 🤣

WetGeek

bigrammy Not sure if you use Android/Google

Thanks, but I just went to a lot of trouble to remove Google from my computers.

Justin

WetGeek And that's all you get when you remove Google products and services, trouble. 😀

bigrammy

WetGeek In the trinity of evil Apple, Microsoft and Google/Android.
Google is probably the most transparent in my opinion and therefore the lesser evil of the three.
I respect anyone who can get by without the convenience of one of the above though. 😄

EDIT: Just spotted your other thread on getting rid of google. Amazon is above the trinity and in a league of their own.. 😂

[deleted]

Justin I respectfully disagree, been without a youtube account, google search, gmail, google translate & google maps for many years now, which was the products i used and wanted to replace. Found products along the way that i prefer, over what Google offered and how they offered it, no trouble at all for my part.

Not trying to start a discussion, just had to reply, sorry for going off track regarding the subject.

kaktuspalme

If you have Nextcloud you could also use Nextcloud Talk. You can just create a link, only a browser is needed to join.
Nextcloud in my case has replaced many of the Google Services.

Justin

[deleted] I don't care in the slightest. I'm just sick and tired of the general paranoia in the Linux community. Use what works for you, be pragmatic, just don't bash other software/services in doing so, it's not necessary in the slightest.

Hell I am currently using Office365 to host my mail because I've spent a few dozen hours wrestling with postfix/dovecot/dkim/spf/tls/ssl certs on my own server to try and have a nice clean working, accepted by others (security wise) mail server.

Offtopicrant++

Harvey

WetGeek
Doesn't discord do video now? I use it for dnd and last session a pop-up appeared saying "This server now supports video" I assume they're rolling it out slowly?

Maybe someone who uses discord more often can confirm.

WetGeek

Harvey Maybe someone who uses discord more often can confirm.

For those who are enjoying discussing this topic, please feel free to carry on.

As for myself, I'm about 99% sure that Wire is the answer for me. My son called me from Italy this morning, and we both enjoyed using Wire.

Thanks to all who suggested alternatives to Skype! It definitely needs some competition.

Diggis

Harvey can confirm discord hosts video chat one to one and with groups. also provides screen streaming capability.

Staudey

Justin I don't care in the slightest. I'm just sick and tired of the general paranoia in the Linux community.

You mean the GNU/Linux community, you obvious Microsoft spy! 😉

davidjharder

Staudey I think you mean GNU plus Linux

Justin

Staudey I use Google and Microsoft products and closed source software 🤯 It's so scarey!

SOLUSfiddler

WetGeek
Hi there!
Having been forced to teach online I tried Zoom, Skype, Jitsi and Whereby:
Zoom - works without having to install anything but has its security/invading one's privacy matters and their servers seem overrun now that the whole world's using it
Skype - works out of the box but is crap for music (I teach violin students) as the preconfigured settings are awful and only geared towards speech
Jitsi - works out of the box without installation except in browsers that don't support WebRTC (Safari, ha ha ha...)
Whereby - works without installation, the login is a bit quirky for me, a few colleagues are using it and like it though
Whatever software tool you might use - use it on a wired connection if at all possible. Zoom and Jitsi just need a lot of bandwidth or at least a stable connection or screen and sound output will be blurry and ragged.
Good luck!

WetGeek

SOLUSfiddler the preconfigured settings are awful and only geared towards speech

You mean, 300 to 3,000 Hz, like old-fashioned telephones?

SOLUSfiddler

WetGeek
The software regards long (musical) notes or sounds ringing on after they were produced as background noise and therefore cuts the microphone off when you play a long note.
It also only opens the mic at the beginning of a long note (such as bow strokes on a violin) after one or two seconds as it "recognises" the audio event, meaning that you cannot hear what's being played for those one or two seconds until it finally makes its way to your loudspeaker.
Very annoying, I find.
But that's the same with Zoom (at least with its free version).

I've tried to use an external mic + an audio interface as that normally promises to be of much better quality. It didn't work as my students couldn't hear me - seems to be a driver and/or linux problem, maybe also a problem with how the GUIs of Skype and Co. are designed: My brother who I checked it with and who knows his mic+audio interface setups (he has the same devices) BUT who has Windows running on his computer had quite a few more features, buttons and whatnot in his Skype GUI - audio and video settings I didn't have in my version of the GUI running Solus.
Ah well...