2012/5/14 Ramana Kumar <[email protected]> > Dear LibrePlanet > > When I switched to a completely free operating system (Parabola), one > thing I had to do was remove Skype. > I had Skype installed because I take Chinese lessons over the internet > from Chinesepod.com and they recommend using Skype by default (I think they > also allow telephony calls if necessary). > I wrote to my teacher about my switch to free software and she was very > understanding and agreed to try a free replacement. > > So I looked for a replacement and found Ekiga mentioned on the FSF page > listing Skype replacements as high priority ( > http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/). > We both registered accounts on ekiga.net and I installed Ekiga and gave > her the long list of SIP clients. She installed Ekiga too. > Then my lesson day came and we tried it out. No luck. Didn't work. So we > switched back to Skype (I still have it installed on my smartphone) that > day. > > I suggested she try another client, since she runs Windows 7 and Ekiga is > only supported up to XP. Looking at the options I guessed Jitsi would be a > good choice. > My teacher is not very computer literate, so she said she would ask her > husband to try installing another one later. > She also suggested that maybe the Chinese government is blocking something > that might cause us problems. > Anyway, her husband installed Jitsi and we tried that at my next lesson. > Again... no luck... didn't work. > So we used Skype that day again. > > (Next time I had another lesson on Skype because my computer didn't boot > because I had upgraded my kernel but not the initscripts - but that's > another, irrelevant, story. Totally my fault.) > > I was disappointed, then I found out on the Jitsi FAQ that it may not work > with ekiga.net. > Damn - I just recommend two incompatible things. > So I sent my teacher another email pointing to that FAQ and suggested > maybe we try XMPP/Jingle instead of SIP. > I chose this because it supposedly works with Jitsi and I didn't want to > make her have to install yet another program. > As for myself, well, I tried Jitsi once but I couldn't stand it - it > didn't work correctly - mostly I think because the free Java runtime is a > bit broken - but that's another story. > But luckily many clients support XMPP/Jingle. I chose Empathy hoping that > its "official" status with Ubuntu would mean it would "just work". > > We both registered accounts on jabber.org and agreed to try it next time. > So I tried Empathy this morning for my lesson. > Guess what? Didn't work! We could text chat, but no voice. > Frantically, I installed Pidgin while we were chatting and switched over > to try that out. > Also failed. > > So we had our lesson on Skype again. > > Now I have installed Yate but I can't test it: there appear to be no "Echo > Test" facilities for XMPP/Jingle anywhere. > > Today was my last lesson with that teacher. I am switching to a new > teacher while the first one goes on maternity leave. > She asked if it was OK for my new teacher to use Skype with me. I had to > say "yes". > How can put another person through this trouble, especially when they may > not be as understanding as my first teacher? > I said I would try to find a working free Skype-replacement on my own > first, and test it thoroughly, before asking my new teacher to try it. > > My question to all of you is: What should I use? > Will Yate work? Is there an echo test somewhere? > What should I do? > > And finally, if this story touched you in any way: > What can I do to help create a better situation? > How can you help too? > > Share your stories, both of success and failure, and share your > recommendations. > (Is there a campaign to get a working Skype replacement where we can keep > this material?) > > I'm a Trisquel GNU/Linux user and tried to use Ekiga since I moved from proprietary to libre software, but no luck.
Since libre XMPP clients started to support audio calls, I started using that and it just works for me. I've used it to communicate with people on Windows using google talk and it work fine. I use Empathy. > I am a programmer, I'm willing to help with bug reports and maybe even > hacking. > Where should I direct my efforts? > > Thanks, > Ramana > > P.S. It was my plan to eventually convince Chinesepod to change its > default. But that is definitely not viable at the moment! Maybe if > everything had gone smoothly it would have been. I still hope they will > eventually use and recommend free software, but I would only feel > comfortable asking them to switch when I know it works. > > The other program I had to remove when I switched to Parabola was the > Adobe Flash plugin, which I was using with Skritter.com to learn Chinese > writing. I've since just stopped using Skritter (and hence stopped learning > how to write). I plan to use the free learning tool Anki to keep up with > learning characters, but for writing I really hope Lightspark or GNU Gnash > will be able to run Skritter soon. (Or that someone writes a free version > of Skritter that isn't based on Actionscript.) I started submitting bug > reports to Lightspark, but I feel like not enough people are working on > it... consider this another call for help. > I really don't know if hanzi and kanji have the same stroke order, but take a look at KanjiVG project <http://kanjivg.tagaini.net/index.html>. I remember I saw a project based on it using HTML canvas to practice writing, so if you are a programmer you may find it useful to write your own tool. -- Felipe Lopez IntrosMedia <http://introsmedia.wordpress.com/>
