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Comment by joshzayin | Hacker News Reader

If this goes through, I wonder what would happen to Skype's Linux and Mac support. I'd hope MS would still support it, but I don't think they have any Linux software currently (I'm not positive about that, so please correct me if I'm wrong) and the Mac version of Office is always delayed compared to the Windows version. I hope Skype doesn't similarly languish.

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One of Skype's major strengths is that you can use it to communicate with others regardless of operating system (for the most part... they don't have BeOS client, etc). Personally, I think there would be a large migration to something else if that changed:

1. Linux/Mac users would move because they had to.

2. Linux/Mac users that use Skype to communicate with long-distance friends and family would convince them to jump ship to another platform (if only to be able to do video conferencing).

3. People pissed off at MS would migrate on principle (though maybe only if there was a viable alternative to the way they currently use Skype).

Microsoft is actually not too bad at Mac support, their Office is usually one year later than the Windows version (Office 2011 vs 2010 for PC, all the way back to Office 98 for Mac vs 97 for PC). And then they make the Expression suite, Microsoft Messenger (Windows Live client), Silverlight and Windows Media components.

I've used the Linux version of Skype. It's rather bare-bones.

Which is great. It does pretty much everything the Windows client does (chat, voice, video, desktop sharing), without the big, gaudy, annoying interface.

I fear that it'll just go away, or actively get shut down by compatibility changes.

(My friends and I practically live on Skype. The one killer feature for us is persistent chatrooms; it's like IRC, except when I log in I get all the missing chat history I didn't get while I was logged out.)

The linux client is missing a critical feature for me: joining an in-progress audio call. One call I'm in is almost always running, and the host is often not there to add me. I end up running windows skype in a VM when I'm on linux.

Yes, I found this very annoying. I remember the previous OSX version was also missing this and I often got laughed at because I couldn't join a call. Apparently this was Steve Jobs fault or something along those lines.

Skype is demonstrably worse on Linux. Aside from it's tendency to lock up, its support for conference calls is wrong; for example, if you're in a call, and call out to a phone number it offers to add the new call to the conference after you've made the request.

What version of Skype and Linux do you have that doesn't have the giant interface and a dozen windows open at once to show a dozen chats?

We moved off Skype chat at our company partly due to the fact that the Linux client makes you keep a separate window open for every chat you're in, making it basically unusable beyond 5 or so chats. Throw in the fact that the usernames aren't color coded and you can't bump the font size and switching to IRC was a no-brainer.

>it's like IRC, except when I log in I get all the missing chat history I didn't get while I was logged out

What?

screen + irssi + /lastlog your_nick

1) Four of those friends are not technical, and wouldn't know what to do with irssi. The remainder are using laptops that get disconnected a lot.

2) I reboot to Windows to play games. There goes the screen session.

3) Skype on iPhones. Seriously. I ain't screwing around with a phone keyboard and terminal app to SSH in, screen -dR and scroll around just to get back into a chat.

I don't use IRC for specific people, if specific people want to speak with me, they can be-bop into mumble, call my phone, IM me, visit me, email me...I'm just explaining why the rationale specific to IRC doesn't make much sense.

We actually built our own IRC client with persistent history: https://github.com/danlarkin/subrosa Such a relief to be able to pick my own client.

Which is fine as long as you never go offline or reboot.

linode.com

Yes. Instead of using the free app Skype, I should instead pay $20/month for a virtual server just so that I can have an always-on screen session with an IRC client running in it. Makes total sense.

>I'm just explaining why the rationale specific to IRC doesn't make much sense.

On N900, Skype is just another Telepathy plugin. This means it uses the same UIs and phone book as the GSM phone, Google Talk, SMS etc.

There really isn't anything better on Linux, sadly. I wrote a longer comment about this a few days ago, but the gist is that Skype is the only semi-reliable video chat/SIP client for Linux, even factoring in serious neglect from Skype Inc. for the platform.

This acquisition probably is the final nail in the coffin for Skype's hypothetical open-source Linux client.

I don't have high hopes at all that alternate versions of Skype will be kept up very long. Everything Microsoft does eventually leads back to Windows or Office.

Huh? There are plenty of better voice-only Linux clients. It's really only in video that Skype has the edge.

Can you clue me in? I just tried several a couple of weekends ago and it didn't work out. Twinkle was good but hasn't been updated for years and doesn't work with PulseAudio. Everything else barely ran.

Ekiga, Wengo, and Pidgin are the ones I've used; they all performed fine.

Ekiga doesn't pick up the other end of the call for me when I tried it a few weeks ago (the person is there but no sound output from their side of the call). I actually used Ekiga extensively for a while (I even wrote a partial patch for GCC 4.4 compatibility, this was ~early 2008) and could eventually get it to work most of the time, but it frequently had problems; it would crash, drop sound, leave the device busy from the last call, etc. Lots of problems with it. Went back to Skype.

I tried Wengo (now QuteCom) and couldn't get it to pick up the sound device or something like that. Maybe another PA bug, but PA has been a default feature of Linux desktops for 3-4 years or more by now. I don't remember the exact issue I had with it.

Pidgin isn't made for SIP/VoIP applications but I still haven't ever been able to get the gstreamer connector to respond correctly. The only IM client with which I've had success using video chat is Empathy, but it had a few issues too with closing devices/picking up subsequent calls.

Maybe it's just because I use Arch, but Skype is the only mostly-reliable video conferencing/SIP-like app on Linux that has actually been usable for me.

Skype very nearly doesn't have Linux software either. The mac software is similarly less than focused on as well.

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