Hi, Including the basics (with a screenshoot on how to setup the ekiga.net account) will be good IMHO.
It's hard to say what "common" problems are, I have no statistics, but as I support Ekiga since more than year now through different means (offical IRC, Mailling list, Ubuntu foroms french and now english) I would say people commonly report: 1- Exept all technical problems i'll list below, people really want to know which programs are compatible with Ekiga. Some people get the bad habit from proprietary products that Ekiga will only work with Ekiga and are seeking the Ekiga for windows port. IMHO, this is really important to emphasis the fact Ekiga use standards and thus is highly compatible with other programs/hardware (ranging from softphone to PBX and hardware ATA). I maintain a list here: http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Which_programs_work_with_Ekiga_%3F This page is the most popular from all the pages on the wiki, really far away from other, see here: http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Special:Popularpages 2- Really bad audio quality; this is due to a bug in Ekiga 2.0.3 for some hardware, I usualy solve this by asking to upgrade to our packages for 2.0.9. The issue here is nor the ekiga team, nor the ubuntu team supports packages for 2.0.9. This will be solved with Gutsy as it has 2.0.9 with it. I discussed this with Seb128, I don't think it's a good idea to promote the 2.0.9 packages the ekiga team has, as noone support them (even if they work well). 3- The webcam don't work (out-of-the-box); this isn't an Ekiga issue, but as many people want to use their webcam for PC-to-PC communication this is a real problem for Ekiga users. Sometimes it's because people don't use the right kernel API (V4l or V4L2, never heard a complain for the firewire based cameras...), sometimes it's because they have several devices with video capabilities thus they must change the channel, but most of time it's because they need to install the proper driver for their device. To my knowledge, exept the pwc driver which comes with the kernel, all other drivers must be installed. IMHO this is something Ubuntu has to care of. 4- NAT issue, Ekiga solve most NAT issue using the STUN technology, but as NAT has no standard yet, there is still some issue in this area, with symetric NATs. Facing this kind of problem involve a knowledge about networks and most of time an intervention on the router. For this reason I choose to document all the ports used by Ekiga. Another issue with NAT is when people are willing to use Ekiga inside the NAT and outside (i.e. with ekiga.net): the most elegant solution is to use Zeroconf in this case (Avahi implementation in Ubuntu) for communication inside the NAT and STUN for communication outside it. I wish Zeroconf will be more documented in Ubuntu. 5- The Ekiga UI may seems weird to some user; like Pidgin Ekiga is meant to stay open, even if you close the main windows using the upper left buttons (_OX), Ekiga remains active in the systray. Some users are unfamiliar to this behavior and complain as when they try to start Ekiga they get an error saying Ekiga it is allready open. I bet usually they find out themselves how it works, but this is something to add in the documentation (as well for Pidgin is needed) as it breaks the usual desktop behavior. A good explaination would be to say something like you don't expect you phone to be unplugged if you hang up. Another good reason is you can close the main windows and continu to talk with your contact if you have to use your desktop while in communication. 6- Some people expect things just to work, WTF must they register here or their !? Proprietary VoIP softwares come usually shipped with a server (like Skype, MSN/WLM, yahoo messenger, etc.) The original Ekiga team idea was to create a softphone using standards thus able to connect to many other products/services as possible. For this reason Ekiga.net or the integrated commercial provider to bridge to PSTN/mobile phones are not activated automatically, user has the choice to use what service they like the most, but some users find this annoying (especially for ekiga.net which is free). The next major release (3.0) will have subscribtion to ekiga.net into the software in the first lunch, but as now users must use a (ugly) web interface. http://ekiga.net Thus it is important to explain the difference between the sofphone and the provider, it's like any e-mail client, you have your client and you must register to a provider which mean you need those informations to properly configure the client : Username, Password and a "registrar" (~ the name server). Like any e-mail client this is the way to get your address and to be reachable. That's all, I hope I was clear enough as english isn't my mother tongue. Regards, Yannick -- Instant messaging documentation doesn't cover useful topics https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/128384 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
