On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 04:49:23AM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote: [...] > > and as long as skype can pick up my voice and transmit the other > > person's voice, that's good enough. > > > > Is the Skype software any less dreadful on Linux than it is on > Windows?
Nope. It's worse, actually. Linux support is spotty, and there have been debacles where Linux support was under consideration to be dropped. Fortunately, they didn't. But it tends to fall behind the Windows version, so weird quirks may pop up every now and then. Plus, it's *still* a 32-bit app. :-( Having said that, though, the latest incarnation of the Linux version actually has native Debian packages, which makes the ordeal a lot less painful than before, when you have to manually hunt down dependent libraries. > It used to be that even the close button doesn't work properly, *by > design*. But last I looked, the damn thing no longer even *allowed* > you to end the glitchy resource-draining process *at all*. And that's > just one small aspect of the program. Fortunately, in Linux there's 'killall -9 skype'. :) Well, that's usually not necessary, since selecting "exit" from the main menu (as opposed to merely closing the window) actually does logout *and* terminate the skype process. > I love the Skype service, but (at least on windows) the software seems > committed to forging new ground in "crapware". The android version > didn't seem nearly as bad though, but even that had a *lot* of user > comments posted about its overall quality and reliability taking a > steep nosedive. That was about a year ago though. You will probably not be very pleased with the Linux version either, then. :) But at least, recent versions have gotten their act together and can now do a saner job of detecting your camera/microphone devices. It used to be very unreliable and required lots of manual tweaking and babysitting. T -- Public parking: euphemism for paid parking. -- Flora