Skype being discontinued
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According to Microsoft (I get a nag every time I open Skype) this dear old communications tool is being dumped in May, with everyone being transitioned to MS Teams, like it or not. I don't like it. As a retiree I use Skype to stay in touch with a handful of old friends and colleagues and I don't need all the meetings and calenders and to do's and similar stuff that I will get with Teams, and I have no doubt using Teams will not remain free for long.
So I have until the end of April to set up a ZorinOS system and get used to it and shove all my documents and music and pics there to wave bye bye to Microsoft.
Now I know I will get LibreOffice (been using it for years so fine with that), I will install Vivaldi (of course) so that should be ok. What I need from you guys is a recommendation for a Skype alternative.....was thinking maybe a desktop WhatsApp, since I use that a lot on my phone, but it's Meta isn't it, and I want to get away from those shysters too..... What is out there in the FOSS universe or Fediverse that will suit my simple needs?
All suggestions gratefully accepted!
Travellin Bob
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- Jitsi Meet
- SenfCall (oh, only German, sorry!)
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@TravellinBob said in Skype being discontinued:
I use Skype to stay in touch with a handful of old friends and colleagues
I think you should first of all establish with them what they will/want to use instead of skype.
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I like to use Discord. It may be a bit overwhelming at first, but it provides all the features Skype had, plus some other neat things. It's platform-independent, and if you want, it even runs in the browser only.
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@TravellinBob The problem with all these alternatives is you'll need to persuade all your contacts to move over. It's easier to do that with the likes of WhatsApp, despite your reservations. I'm on it because it's the easiest for communicating with extended family and friends. But I also use Signal for more private purposes.
There are some cross-messenger solutions out there but they are not free, and I don't know how well they work. Sekur is one I've heard of.
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@wintercoast I don't have anything at all against WhatsApp, I use it a lot on my mobile to stay in touch with all my circle - I will probably end up installing a desktop version (assuming it's available on the Zorin app store) and use it. I'm not a fan of Facebook and have no wish to use other Meta products, but I would not be in the least surprised if Zuckerberg decided to dump WA and force everyone onto Messenger...I could never get my head around why Meta bought WA in the first plsace, and even less around why they haven't killed it already.
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Here are some negatives of Whatsapp (I wouldn't ever use that), and a breakdown of some other popular ones
https://proton.me/blog/whatsapp-alternatives#whats-wrong-with-whatsapp
Discord is proprietary, if they change something that you don't like (be it in the software or in their privacy policy or it changes hands along with your data) then you need to search for a new alternative again, and basically it was made for gamers so it is rather busy and thus potentially not everyone's cup of tea.
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What about whooper? Is it reliable or not to connect with friends and colleagues?
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@lucytaylor01 Never heard of it, tbh.....do tell me more!
Travellin Bob
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@wintercoast said in Skype being discontinued:
But I also use Signal for more private purposes.
Are you sure it really is private? Look what happened with the leak in the U.S. I am sure there is more to the story than meets the eye, as usual, but Signal was the app they were using.
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@Granite1 said in Skype being discontinued:
Are you sure it really is private?
I only use it for one on one, mostly to the same regular correspondent.
It doesn't matter what you're using if you set up a group and then add the wrong person to it!
Though, a possible way forward is to use gated access with verified credentials. Open Chat is an application that has support for these. Though they haven't yet enabled end-to-end encryption (there's a technical reason for this, which I won't go into here).
So, the idea here is that the US government, in this case the cabinet, would issue verified credentials to those qualified to be chat participants, namely relevant cabinet members. Then anyone without those credentials would be auto-rejected by the software when they attempted to join the chat. Of course, you'd still need to design some rules around this to guard against error and to manage entry and exit to the list, e.g., when someone is fired, resigns, etc.
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@TravellinBob whopper refers to a significant or impactful piece of news, announcement, or update that is likely to generate considerable attention and discussion within an organization.
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@lucytaylor01 said in Skype being discontinued:
@TravellinBob whopper refers to a significant or impactful piece of news, announcement, or update that is likely to generate considerable attention and discussion within an organization.
Lucy, sorry you've lost me.....
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@Granite1 said in Skype being discontinued:
Look what happened with the leak in the U.S. I am sure there is more to the story than meets the eye, as usual
Here is the "more to the story."
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@wintercoast said in Skype being discontinued:
Here is the "more to the story."
Thank you. It is a very elaborate, logical explanation that should now shut down the discussion, which I guess is the objective.
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@TravellinBob said in Skype being discontinued:
As a retiree I use Skype to stay in touch with a handful of old friends and colleagues and I don't need all the meetings and calenders and to do's and similar stuff that I will get with Teams, and I have no doubt using Teams will not remain free for long.
I think it depends how technical your friends are. Desktop WhatsApp doesn't exist for Linux so isn't an option anyway, but Signal does. If one-time URLs are OK then Jitsi Meet as already mentioned or Brave Talk should work for that.
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@TravellinBob My experience with Whatsapp is pretty good on my phone but an international call I get periodically does not always go through. Instead I get a chirp that a call was missed. At other times it is OK. Crystal clear as if I was in the same room and hardly any lag.
My experience with the desktop app is that you have to link-validate it with your cell phone to make it work, meaning that each time the desktop app is launched you need to do something like a 2FA from the phone
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@omnisambles Good to know WA desktop isn't available on Linux...... Thanks for the heads up.
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@TravellinBob said in Skype being discontinued:
What I need from you guys is a recommendation for a Skype alternative.....was thinking maybe a desktop WhatsApp, since I use that a lot on my phone, but it's Meta isn't it, and I want to get away from those shysters too..... What is out there in the FOSS universe or Fediverse that will suit my simple needs?
All suggestions gratefully accepted!
I'm aware of 3 programs that you may want to consider.
Telegram
https://alternativeto.net/software/telegram/about/
https://telegram.org/Session
https://alternativeto.net/software/session/about/
https://getsession.orgWire
https://alternativeto.net/software/wire/about/
https://wire.com/en/
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