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The state of VoIP on Unix, or, my life in software hell 4 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • You'd spend a lot less time frustrated if you were running a distro that had this stuff as packages. I've played with GnomeMeeting and it installed fine from Debian unstable. I'm using ALSA, but I have OSS emulation turned on, so I don't know which one it used. Unfortunately, the sound quality I've been able to get with SIP is pretty poor.

    Skype I've had much better luck with. It doesn't install anything, as I download it as a tarball and just move it to /usr/local/skype, then symlink /usr/local/bin/sky
    • Hey, I'm glad they work for you! Are you trying to clarify my conclusion and accidentially drawing attention away? I decided VoIP wasn't ready for prime time, was too difficult for the average user to get going, wasn't oriented towards Free Software or Linux users, and on Linux, isn't ready for prime time. You say it's my package system [wrong - testing was done on Knoppix as well as plain old Debian], say that Skype works [wrong - the infinately large bug is due to a window manager interaction but again Skype should offer -geometory], and make a number of other assertitions that seem to have nothing to do with my premise and fail to be correct at the same time. Oh lord how I hate replying to people who didn't comprehend the original post in the first place...

      This gets back to my rant on "labratory conditions". Ask any statistician about a sample size of one and what can be gleaned from it. They'll hem and haw a lot and admit that there are error margins and such for dealing with this, but they'll go on to discourage you from ever trying to use this data for anything. The "it worked for me!" people (you) are almost as obnoxious and idiotic as the "it doesn't work!" people (me). At least I, after a week of dicking with it, came to the conclusion that quality is subpar (not that none of them really work).

      So, in case anyone else accidentally stumbles on your post, let me try to do some damage control here and summerize my original post (none of whose assertions you've actually challenged):

      1. SIP doesn't work through NAT for a firewall.
      2. Average users don't know how to open up their firewalls.
      3. Corporate and mobile users usually can't open their firewalls.
      4. Skype shows serious signs of amature design and the support forums back this up.
      5. Linux packages (and Linux' package system) are not reliable except in labratory conditions. In the real world, there are manu failure scenarios in which they fail just as consistency as they work under other scenarios.

      Let me take a moment to remind everyone that software sucks [we-hates-software.com], no matter what software it is. Even Linux. Remember mutt's motto: "mutt sucks. It just sucks less than other mail readers".

      -scott
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