Ask Slashdot: FOSS, Multiplatform Skype Replacement for PC-to-PC Video Chat?

obarthelemy writes "Skype having just been borged, now may be a good time to hedge our bets and look for a replacement. I'm *not* looking for something that interfaces with POTS, but just a simple PC-to-PC video chat tool that is very easy to configure and use, reliable, multiplatform (my family has Windows, Linux, MacOS; iOS and Android would be nice extras), and has good video/voice quality. We're almost only skyping with each other. What would you recommend?"

Ekiga

[leoplan2]

Ekiga?

You mean a SIP client?

[bradm]

Perhaps you could start evaluating some of these? [wikipedia.org]

Re:There is nothing else

[atomicbutterfly]

skype on linux is buggy and so so. I give it two chances to get better under MS management, slim and none. Thus as an avid promoter of thin-client linux boxes, I'm not unlikely to want to risk investing in corporate multi-screen-sharing chat accounts, and or skype centric voip phones.

Skype has been crap under Linux for ages, and hadn't shown much sign of getting better even before Microsoft bought them out. I remember the announcement that the Skype UI would be open sourced - what's happened since? Absolutely nothing.

Point is, if you look at the direction Skype has been going on Linux (nowhere), you probably wouldn't have picked Skype to use on your Linux boxes with or without Microsoft's influence, and would have looked elsewhere. Besides, I thought the commercial side of VoIP was already a mature market, with many alternatives to Skype (we're talking corporate level here, not consumer).

Re:Skype

[Haeleth]

If anything, I am hoping Microsoft will actually work well on it and improve on it greatly.

Microsoft is very likely to work on Skype and improve it greatly.

Microsoft is very unlikely to make the versions they have worked on and greatly improved available for any platforms other than Microsoft Windows, and possibly OS X if you're really lucky.

Got an Android phone? You'd better stop depending on Skype, as quickly as you can, because you can bet your bottom dollar one of the first things that will happen is that "chat with all your friends on Skype!" will become a unique selling point of the Microsoft Windows Phone platform.