[vox-tech] Linux and video chat

[Ken Bloom]

On Fri, 2009-08-14 at 21:35 -0700, Norm Matloff wrote:
> A list on the Web stated that the Logitech Quickcam Communicator MP
> worked under Ubuntu right of the box.  Well, it did, at least in the
> sense the things work with cheese.
> 
> My question is, how do with people on Windows machines who don't want to
> download anything?  That eliminates Ekiga, for instance.

Ekiga should be able to speak H.323 with Microsoft NetMeeting, which was
included with Windows up until Windows Vista. (Ekiga was originally
called GnomeMeeting because it was built as an interoperable NetMeeting
clone.) According to the Wikipedia article, you can also get NetMeeting
for Vista as a hotfix from Microsoft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NetMeeting

> The documentation says that one can use Empathy to video chat with
> people using Google Talk (which still doesn't have a Linux version).
> I tried that, and the error on the other person's side said that GTalk
> doesn't work with my platform. :-(  Gyagi (may have that spelled wrong)
> is supposed to connect to Yahoo! Messenger, but it too had an error,
> which stated that the version may be too old.  Skype gave a TCP/IP error
> message, which according to the Web is pretty standard for Skype on
> Linux.

Don't all of these (potentially) require downloads on the Windows side
too?

--Ken