Videochat for Vivaldi

pecsijanos

Did you thinking of making a videochat opportunity for Vivaldi? Since Zoom limits time frame of videochats even for 2 devices, I think, Brave's videochat is one of the best opportunity (up to 4 devices with no time limit and account also not required to use it) - after Microsoft Teams, where you can give control for the othes during screen sharing (like a Zoom + TeamViewer combo) with indentified cursors (although you need to have an account for this as well).

jane.n

@pecsijanos, have you tried Whereby?

pecsijanos

@jane-n Didn't hear about it, thank you. Sign up needed but it could be working. Thanks.

jane.n

@pecsijanos
True, the host needs an account, but everyone else can join by using the link the host shares.

ingolftopf

There has long been a very good, very powerful Open Source alternative to Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Co,
'Jitsi Meet'.
Without an account, without registration, without restrictions, directly from Vivaldi browser.

Or with the app for Android (preferably from 'F-Droid', the real one),
or directly from Vivaldi Android.

It's even available for Apple,
thanks to enthusiastic developers.

'Big Blue Button' (BBB) is also a very good Open Source alternative.

stilgarwolf

@ingolftopf Jitsi is the best: browser, desktop and mobile clients, can be self hosted and is a good solution for a company, even for a larger one.
I'm using mostly the browser on jitsi.org (no bloatware, no spyware!) and, sometimes, Android clients.
And I plan to use a self hosted instance.

BBB is mostly a (very good) learning platform. But is linked to Ubuntu and, until recently, was locked to Ubuntu 18 (now is locked to 20.04). I think BBB is too heavy just for videoconferencing.

ingolftopf

@stilgarwolf
What do you mean by "connected to Ubuntu" and by "locked"?

Big Blue Button' (BBB) works in almost all browsers, regardless of the operating system.
But again, it must be a well-maintained BBB server.

'Jitsi Meet' is lower-threshold than BBB and easier to use.

RiveDroite

@ingolftopf my company uses BBB and though it works great, walking our clients through setting it up isn't fun.

stilgarwolf

@ingolftopf BBB server cannot be installed on other Linux than Ubuntu 20.04 (or Ubuntu 18.04 for previous BBB version).
I know BBB heavily depends on some third party libraries unavailable on other distros, but I may be wrong.

DoctorG

@stilgarwolf ~~And who should pay the monthly fees for BBB when added in Vivaldi?~~
Oh, i did not see that can host BBB on own servers. Sorry my fault.

stilgarwolf

@DoctorG Fees?

DoctorG

@stilgarwolf Strange that BBB is only on Ubuntu as written on their pages?

stilgarwolf

@DoctorG Not so strange: as I know, BBB team uses many third party libraries which are not present in any distros. Is a huge work to make all these to work together and a nightmare to debug.

DoctorG

@stilgarwolf Not nice for people who do not want to support Shuttleworth's non-free products.
I as a server admin disklike the Ubuntu server distires.

stilgarwolf

@DoctorG I agree, but many libraries used by BBB reside only on Ubuntu PPAs.

DoctorG

@stilgarwolf That is the culprit of non-free software. I do not know if would be so useful if Vivaldi would be bound to BBB. But i am out of discussion now on BBB.

Why not use some Jitsi instance? Not enough features? Oh, Debian+Ubuntu-only. Sad.

stilgarwolf

@DoctorG I'm using only Jitsi (and Signal) for videochat, see my first reply.

But BBB is considered (one of) the best learning platform today and is open source (https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton).

ingolftopf

@stilgarwolf
To use 'Jitsi Meet' and 'Big Blue Button' (BBB) videoconferencing in the Vivaldi browser, you do not have to set up your own server.

However, maintenance is quite complex and problems often occur as a result.

There are many very good public 'Jitsi Meet' and BBB servers.

For BBB, for example:
https://www.senfcall.de/

Open Source is simply the better solution.

ingolftopf

The Open Source messengers [Matrix] and 'Jabber/XMPP' also use 'Jitsi Meet'.