On 3/27/07, Mrugesh Karnik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Tuesday 27 Mar 2007 00:05:13 Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
> > 8. Check with Crossover office if they are willing to make yahoo > > messenger, msn messenger to work under linux. More the number of ppl > > who request for a > > What do messengers by crossover office provide that are superior to > gaim/kopete/ayttm/put_your_fav_foss_messenger_here? (It's a genuine > question) Voice chat, webcam and those useless winks etc. Even more of a problem is the familiar interface. People need those and the Linux messengers don't have them. I think AMSN is a good replacement for MSN messenger. Except voice it supports nearly all the major features properly. Even Kmess is a good alternative. The problem is with Yahoo. There's no good a replacement. Kopete supports Webcam and all, but creating temporary user accounts in Kopete is a pain because it works on Unix design philosophy, assuming that every user will login using a different system account rather than all of them logging in with one single accounts and creating different temporary accounts. > > I seriously feel Wine is a really good intermediate solution to the > > problem of moving client desktops to Linux. > > I really would prefer suggesting a longer term solution that would > give users a truly great experience of FOSS software. I think rather using wine, develop proper alternatives and deploy them. Keep in mind the fact that if you do manage to get cyber cafes to use Linux, there's a good chance that you'll gain a few home users as well. Developing proper FOSS alternatives for the common software a home user needs is the best way.
Mid-term was with reference to the dates for the cafes. Long term can be anywhere between next week to heat death of earth. I was trying to be more practical here. More so with a workable solution within a 2-3 month time frame. FOSS alternatives to what ? Yahoo client ? You'll play a catch up with them for the rest of your life. They change a bit / encryption scheme and your clients will barf on you. MSN ? Same case. It was only recently that OSS managed to interpret the obscure features of the Y! protocol. Forget voice and webcam. Gyach came close. however getting your webcam to work under Linux is a prayer at best. Unless you make a OSS voice / chat solution popular and bundle it on most desktops you are fighting a long term eternal battle. Coming back to the point of VOIP ( which is the one that matters most ) unless the OSS solution does not allow user to make a call from PC to Phone or use webcam for a decent payment ( for the infrastructure ) it is esentially useless to the aam janta. Talk of webcams and video editing and things like that and most seasoned Linux professionals get the creeps. Fast , Free and works for my hardware is the only criteria for the end-users to use it. While I endorse OSS on every front, being anal to workarounds does not work anywhere beyond techies domain. @Rony - And to the question of using wine here's from the wine faq - 3.8. Do I need to have a DOS partition on my system to use Wine? You do not need a licensed and installed copy of DOS or MS Windows to install, configure or run Wine. However, Wine has to be able to 'see' an MS Windows binary (i.e. application) if it is to run it. regards, C RTFM is an oft used and least applied word in FOSS. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
