Ramana,
I had a quit similar issue in a different settings. In our case we
were looking for a solution for conf-call in a personal context (so
the financial question was also important) and we need something
stable and easy to use.
Our solution was Mumble-murmur (http://mumble.sourceforge.net/) which
are BSD and GPL licensed.
The client, Mumble, runs on Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux. This was
an important point for us as we were a quite heterogeneous group.
Furthermore, the Windows client is very easy to install (the windows
users of our group were the most computer illiterate, thus we need
something very easy to use for them).
The server component, Murmur, can run on GNU/Linux even if, for our
part, we use public murmur servers. As Mumble is really common in the
gaming-world there is a lot of solutions to get a channel from setting
up your own server to public hosts (commercial or not). You have a
list of some hosts on the mumble sourceforge page
(http://mumble.sourceforge.net/Hosters).
Have a nice day
On lundi 14 mai 2012 at 11:10 AM, Ramana Kumar wrote:Dear LibrePlanet
When I switched to a completely free operating system (Parabola), one
thing I had to do was remove Skype.
I had Skype installed because I take Chinese lessons over the internet
from Chinesepod.com and they recommend using Skype by default (I think
they also allow telephony calls if necessary).
I wrote to my teacher about my switch to free software and she was
very understanding and agreed to try a free replacement.
So I looked for a replacement and found Ekiga mentioned on the FSF
page listing Skype replacements as high priority
(http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/).
We both registered accounts on ekiga.net and I installed Ekiga and
gave her the long list of SIP clients. She installed Ekiga too.
Then my lesson day came and we tried it out. No luck. Didn't work. So
we switched back to Skype (I still have it installed on my smartphone)
that day.
I suggested she try another client, since she runs Windows 7 and Ekiga
is only supported up to XP. Looking at the options I guessed Jitsi
would be a good choice.
My teacher is not very computer literate, so she said she would ask
her husband to try installing another one later.
She also suggested that maybe the Chinese government is blocking
something that might cause us problems.
Anyway, her husband installed Jitsi and we tried that at my next
lesson.
Again... no luck... didn't work.
So we used Skype that day again.
(Next time I had another lesson on Skype because my computer didn't
boot because I had upgraded my kernel but not the initscripts - but
that's another, irrelevant, story. Totally my fault.)
I was disappointed, then I found out on the Jitsi FAQ that it may not
work with ekiga.net.
Damn - I just recommend two incompatible things.
So I sent my teacher another email pointing to that FAQ and suggested
maybe we try XMPP/Jingle instead of SIP.
I chose this because it supposedly works with Jitsi and I didn't want
to make her have to install yet another program.
As for myself, well, I tried Jitsi once but I couldn't stand it - it
didn't work correctly - mostly I think because the free Java runtime
is a bit broken - but that's another story.
But luckily many clients support XMPP/Jingle. I chose Empathy hoping
that its "official" status with Ubuntu would mean it would "just
work".
We both registered accounts on jabber.org and agreed to try it next
time.
So I tried Empathy this morning for my lesson.
Guess what? Didn't work! We could text chat, but no voice.
Frantically, I installed Pidgin while we were chatting and switched
over to try that out.
Also failed.
So we had our lesson on Skype again.
Now I have installed Yate but I can't test it: there appear to be no
"Echo Test" facilities for XMPP/Jingle anywhere.
Today was my last lesson with that teacher. I am switching to a new
teacher while the first one goes on maternity leave.
She asked if it was OK for my new teacher to use Skype with me. I had
to say "yes".
How can put another person through this trouble, especially when they
may not be as understanding as my first teacher?
I said I would try to find a working free Skype-replacement on my own
first, and test it thoroughly, before asking my new teacher to try it.
My question to all of you is: What should I use?
Will Yate work? Is there an echo test somewhere?
What should I do?
And finally, if this story touched you in any way:
What can I do to help create a better situation?
How can you help too?
Share your stories, both of success and failure, and share your
recommendations.
(Is there a campaign to get a working Skype replacement where we can
keep this material?)
I am a programmer, I'm willing to help with bug reports and maybe even
hacking.
Where should I direct my efforts?
Thanks,
Ramana
P.S. It was my plan to eventually convince Chinesepod to change its
default. But that is definitely not viable at the moment! Maybe if
everything had gone smoothly it would have been. I still hope they
will eventually use and recommend free software, but I would only feel
comfortable asking them to switch when I know it works.
The other program I had to remove when I switched to Parabola was the
Adobe Flash plugin, which I was using with Skritter.com to learn
Chinese writing. I've since just stopped using Skritter (and hence
stopped learning how to write). I plan to use the free learning tool
Anki to keep up with learning characters, but for writing I really
hope Lightspark or GNU Gnash will be able to run Skritter soon. (Or
that someone writes a free version of Skritter that isn't based on
Actionscript.) I started submitting bug reports to Lightspark, but I
feel like not enough people are working on it... consider this another
call for help.
