5 ms·

I think as long as google voice / hangouts is competing for that position, it's unlikely. Skype for linux has historically been kind of a disaster, so I don't e

I think as long as google voice / hangouts is competing for that position, it's unlikely. Skype for linux has historically been kind of a disaster, so I don't expect a chrome app effort from them either.

netcan 13y ago
Unfortunately the recipients I have in mind use skype to talk to their kids & friends. It's non negotiable. My guess is that there are a lot of use cases where 1 or 2 missing apps/features are non negotiable. IMO the solution is to gradually eliminate barriers to switching from windows. This probably means treating the initial hypothesis that the web is all you need as a starting point and trying to keep chrome's complexity down to Android levels while gradually adding "bloat". I still think ChromOS could take a big slice of Window's market share, maybe bigger than Apple mac.
- Touche 13y ago
  > It's non negotiable. That's silly, WebRTC sites are popping up every where. My personal favorite is appear.in, you can have your family chat with you just by them clicking a link. What is it about Skype that makes it the only solution they're willing to use?
  - fidotron 13y ago
    Cases I know of are things like Smart TVs with Skype integration and no chance of supporting WebRTC. Skype did a good job of getting embedded on lots of devices.
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  "It's non negotiable." It may feel that way right now, but no, it's not. That's like saying, "The recipients I have in mind use AOL Instant Messenger. They're never going to switch to Facebook."
thefreeman 13y ago
Skype works perfectly fine on linux natively and has for a while.
- hga 13y ago
  Agreed ... well, mostly, I've got one of my machines with an older version that always hangs up when I try to answer a call. But that was an "upgrade", and if I'd tried to upgrade it again after noticing I'd probably be OK. But the current version for Debian wheezy works great, and I just switched my 80 year old father to Debian with Gnome Classic (he has very few windows open at a time so it's OK) and that version of Skype, and he's quite happy with the result. Heck, he might even be using Chrome instead of his familiar Firefox if Chrome's tabs paid attention to how big fonts should be. Awful oversight for those who's eyesight isn't so good.
- daveid 13y ago
  Well, it works, but not quite perfectly fine. I have two Linux machines (Fedora and Xubuntu), and both sometimes have Skype crashing when there's an incoming call. There are also random crashes and glitches when Skype is not the only application trying to play sound. I think "disaster" is quite fitting.
- makmanalp 13y ago
  Last time I used it was a year ago, and it worked, but I consistently got pixelated, muddy and laggy video compared to both the Windows and OSX versions. And it wasn't driver issues, any other GPU accelerated graphics / video decoding work fine. And the UI was different, along with missing features. The slow release cycle didn't help their case. Looks like 4.2 is out and might have fixed these, hooray! The UI sure looks nicer now.
- outworlder 13y ago
  Only if you are just interested in texting. The sound support is outdated, unmaintained (and therefore, buggy) and has been for a while now.
  - makomk 13y ago
72deluxe 13y ago
Skype has also been a disaster on other platforms. Even the Windows one is full of weird UI layouts and adverts and the Android one is buggy as anything, as is the iOS one on my mum's iPad4. Loss of sync, audio, video, high CPU usage etc. all in there.

netcan 13y ago

Unfortunately the recipients I have in mind use skype to talk to their kids & friends. It's non negotiable. My guess is that there are a lot of use cases where 1 or 2 missing apps/features are non negotiable. IMO the solution is to gradually eliminate barriers to switching from windows. This probably means treating the initial hypothesis that the web is all you need as a starting point and trying to keep chrome's complexity down to Android levels while gradually adding "bloat". I still think ChromOS could take a big slice of Window's market share, maybe bigger than Apple mac.

Touche 13y ago
> It's non negotiable. That's silly, WebRTC sites are popping up every where. My personal favorite is appear.in, you can have your family chat with you just by them clicking a link. What is it about Skype that makes it the only solution they're willing to use?
- fidotron 13y ago
  Cases I know of are things like Smart TVs with Skype integration and no chance of supporting WebRTC. Skype did a good job of getting embedded on lots of devices.
VikingCoder 13y ago
"It's non negotiable." It may feel that way right now, but no, it's not. That's like saying, "The recipients I have in mind use AOL Instant Messenger. They're never going to switch to Facebook."

thefreeman 13y ago

Skype works perfectly fine on linux natively and has for a while.

hga 13y ago
Agreed ... well, mostly, I've got one of my machines with an older version that always hangs up when I try to answer a call. But that was an "upgrade", and if I'd tried to upgrade it again after noticing I'd probably be OK. But the current version for Debian wheezy works great, and I just switched my 80 year old father to Debian with Gnome Classic (he has very few windows open at a time so it's OK) and that version of Skype, and he's quite happy with the result. Heck, he might even be using Chrome instead of his familiar Firefox if Chrome's tabs paid attention to how big fonts should be. Awful oversight for those who's eyesight isn't so good.
daveid 13y ago
Well, it works, but not quite perfectly fine. I have two Linux machines (Fedora and Xubuntu), and both sometimes have Skype crashing when there's an incoming call. There are also random crashes and glitches when Skype is not the only application trying to play sound. I think "disaster" is quite fitting.
makmanalp 13y ago
Last time I used it was a year ago, and it worked, but I consistently got pixelated, muddy and laggy video compared to both the Windows and OSX versions. And it wasn't driver issues, any other GPU accelerated graphics / video decoding work fine. And the UI was different, along with missing features. The slow release cycle didn't help their case. Looks like 4.2 is out and might have fixed these, hooray! The UI sure looks nicer now.
outworlder 13y ago
Only if you are just interested in texting. The sound support is outdated, unmaintained (and therefore, buggy) and has been for a while now.
- makomk 13y ago

72deluxe 13y ago

Skype has also been a disaster on other platforms. Even the Windows one is full of weird UI layouts and adverts and the Android one is buggy as anything, as is the iOS one on my mum's iPad4. Loss of sync, audio, video, high CPU usage etc. all in there.