Every since it was announced that Microsoft bought Skype I've been looking for a FOSS replacement.
The search lead to Ekiga, which I had used before, but abandon because it was too immature. This time I installed the 3.2.6 version from the repository. I've connected with several people and had acceptable results with the default settings. Not as good as Skype, and with no screen sharing, but acceptable for basic video conferencing with friends, one on one. Group to group can't work well with headphones, and to remove the headphones requires a careful setting of mic and mic boost, along with echo cancellation and the jitter setting. The higher the jitter setting the greater the gap between the movement of the lips and the hearing of the voice.
Over the last couple of days NoWorries and I gave Ekiga a more extensive shake down. Here is some of what we found:
First, don't use "speex", and don't check-mark more than four audio codecs.
Second, video sizes greater than 320X240 tend to crash the video, but doesn't bother the sound. However, if one chooses the detached picture-in-picture the 320X240 frame is free from the contact list. Clicking on the maximize button produces a stable full screen with reasonable crispness.
What brought our last test series to an abrupt end was a crash that closed my Ekiga client and took the icon out of the system tray. When I fired up the client again the webcam light came on without me initiating a call. In order to turn off the webcam I checked the "Disable Network Detection" box under the general settings panel of the preference dialog. BUT, when I unchecked the box in order to re-establish the STUN server (STUN.ekiga.net) connection, I got the following message box:
There is a BIG problem with that message. I have NOT been using port forwarding before, and setting up the 5060, 5000-5100, 3478 UDP ports and 1720 TCP port in my wireless router and the ufw didn't let Ekiga work. One possible fix was to re-run the Connection Wizard, but doing that didn't work either. Neither did reinstalling Ekiga or deleting ~/.gconf/apps/ekiga and letting the client recreate it. So, Ekiga video conferencing is out of action until this problem is resolved, or Ekiga adopts a better network configuration tool. I can still make PC-to-phone calls with Ekiga because the sip.diamondcard.us network connection works well. So, Ekiga is limited to phone calls only.
I tried QuteCom but it doesn't have enough input parameters to set up Ekiga. However, Blink, in addition to its sip2sip.info server, allowed me to set up Ekiga.net for audio and chat connections, but Blink doesn't have its video or screen sharing capabilities enabled yet. When it does I am switching to it. It's phone conferencing is second to none, and it has record capability built in.
The search lead to Ekiga, which I had used before, but abandon because it was too immature. This time I installed the 3.2.6 version from the repository. I've connected with several people and had acceptable results with the default settings. Not as good as Skype, and with no screen sharing, but acceptable for basic video conferencing with friends, one on one. Group to group can't work well with headphones, and to remove the headphones requires a careful setting of mic and mic boost, along with echo cancellation and the jitter setting. The higher the jitter setting the greater the gap between the movement of the lips and the hearing of the voice.
Over the last couple of days NoWorries and I gave Ekiga a more extensive shake down. Here is some of what we found:
First, don't use "speex", and don't check-mark more than four audio codecs.
Second, video sizes greater than 320X240 tend to crash the video, but doesn't bother the sound. However, if one chooses the detached picture-in-picture the 320X240 frame is free from the contact list. Clicking on the maximize button produces a stable full screen with reasonable crispness.
What brought our last test series to an abrupt end was a crash that closed my Ekiga client and took the icon out of the system tray. When I fired up the client again the webcam light came on without me initiating a call. In order to turn off the webcam I checked the "Disable Network Detection" box under the general settings panel of the preference dialog. BUT, when I unchecked the box in order to re-establish the STUN server (STUN.ekiga.net) connection, I got the following message box:
Ekiga did not manage to configure your network settings automatically. You can still use it, but you need to configure your network settings manually.
Please see http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Enab...rding_manually for instructions
Please see http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Enab...rding_manually for instructions
I tried QuteCom but it doesn't have enough input parameters to set up Ekiga. However, Blink, in addition to its sip2sip.info server, allowed me to set up Ekiga.net for audio and chat connections, but Blink doesn't have its video or screen sharing capabilities enabled yet. When it does I am switching to it. It's phone conferencing is second to none, and it has record capability built in.
Between then and now there have been several updates, including two kernel updates. Don't know which updates fixed the problem, or if any did, but the problem is gone now. 
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