[ILUG] SKYPE

[Barry O'Donovan]

On Fri 27 May 2005 09:24, Kevin Philp wrote:
> Does anyone out there use SKYPE on Linux and what is their experience
> with it?? Good, Bad. Our small company spends a small fortune on
> international calls and it sounds like an excellent deal. It also
> supports actually supports Linux rather than the usual "here is a
> binary...good luck but don't call us".

I use Skype a lot and so do quite a few ILUGers. Their Linux binary is 
regularly updated with many bugfixes and some features as evidenced by 
their changelog [1]. In fact their was a new update released only two 
days ago [...goes to download]. I did give SkypeOut a chance about 6 
months ago but the quality was miserable for Irish numbers. Having said 
that, the quality for calling to a landline in England was great.

If I recall correctly, they have also opened up their API so don't be 
surprised if you see Skype integration in applications such as Kopete 
in the future.

Currently, I use Skype to talk to other Skype users and I have gotten a 
Blueface [2] SIP/VoIP account with Dublin phone number for E9.99 a 
month which I use with KPhone [3]. They also offer pay as you go 
accounts and they have recently added other Irish geographic numbers to 
their product line. Their support was very good including e-mailing me 
advice as they noticed that I was having probelms logging in (KPhone's 
configuration dialog isn't exactly intuitive). 

I am having trouble finding a good Linux VoIP client (recommendations 
anyone?). KPhone is adequate as best, crashes frequently and has few or 
no features. It's DTMF tones are also incompatible with Blueface's 
voice message system (this could be a problem with Blueface as the 
tones work for other systems such as the Ormonde Cinema who have been 
repairing their online purchasing system for six months now... but 
that's another day's rant).

Creating a nice VoIP application was always a project I had in the back 
of my mind if I could find the time (tm) but I recently came across two 
new projects which may replace KPhone for me (I haven't tried them 
yet): WengoPhone [4] and Twinkle [5].

[1] http://www.skype.com/products/skype/linux/changelog.html
[2] http://www.blueface.ie/
[3] http://www.wirlab.net/kphone/
[4] http://developer.berlios.de/projects/openwengo/
[5] http://www.twinklephone.com/

-- 
Regards,
Barry O'Donovan
http://www.barryodonovan.com/

GPG key: http://www.barryodonovan.com/gpg.asc

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