Hello, all you nice folks out there in mailing list land. This is Doug Smith of the Oralux development team with a nice new Christmas gift for all of you.
Imagine, if you can, the ability for all of us to hear each other for the first time. We would really be able to see each other with our own two ears. Imagine, if you will, all of us being able to have a "conference call" as we call it here. Imagine, if you can, the ability to have a common area where we can leave messages for each other in our own voices. Well, the time has arrived. The product is called linphone and it is available right now for all of us to use. Linphone is a publicly available program that is what is called a "sip phone," which means that it uses a special internet protocol to let everyone who wants to do so, send messages to a voice mail server, talk directly to each other as though they were on the regular telephone and even do more. There are a number of free services available that you can use and they will be discussed later. If you wish to know more about it, I will be happy to tell you here. Linphone has both a graphical user interface, and a text command line one. These are accessed by running different programs. In order to run the graphical program, just use the command linphone and you will be in business. You can talk to other people on the computer by going directly from your machine to the other person's machine or you can set it up to use a "sip server, " which uses the same special internet protocol to allow you to use the program even better than before. If you cannot use the graphical interface of linphone, you are still going to be able to enjoy the benefits of it. Just use linphonec in place of linphone and you will be up and running with a console mode version. The c on the end of the name actually stands for console. This can also be interpreted to stand for command line. Either way, you will, I am sure enjoy what you can do. For example, what if you wanted to call me on the telephone to ask me a question, or call Gilles or any other member of the team on the telephone to ask any of us a question. I have never made an international phone call in my life and don't even dream of having the knowledge to do so. Well, it is simple. That international call can be made like this, and I am glad to share my world-wide access number with all of you. I would like to hear from you. Well, you just do this. The first step is to start either linphone or linphonec, whichever one you need to use. The second step is to call me. This is done in a way that will take you a few tries to get used to, but I think all of you can do it. I only know how to do this with linphonec, the command line version, so here we go. In the command line version of linphonec, what you do is wait a couple of seconds until the system says "ready: linphonec." When you hear this, just enter c sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] The c stands for call, the sip stands for the Session Initiation Protocol, which is the special protocol that linphone and, for that matter, linphonec uses. [EMAIL PROTECTED] is not an e-mail address, though it looks remarkably like one. This is the actual access number that lets anyone using one of these kinds of programs be able to call me. That's it, now you should get one of the following. If my linphonec is not on, you will get an unavailable message from me. After this, you can leave your message just as you would do on a traditional answering machine. The message I have spoken and the one you will leave will be on a hard disk on a server running a telephone system program called asterisk, which is very difficult to use and is way beyond the scope of this letter. I will get the message the next time I have my linphonec on. You will need a microphone and you will need to have both the microphone and your mixer settings in good order. You can contact me by e-mail, preferably, on the list so that the responses will go into the archives and other people might be able to find them in the future to solve their problems. I will be glad to help you each personally. Another option is that, if my linphonec is on, and I am currently talking to another person, you will get a busy message from me and you can leave a message on the hard drive of the server machine. There will be no stupid, dope-head, beeping busy signal. Now comes the one we all hope we get. If my linphonec is on, and I am not talking to anyone else, you will get to talk to me. It is just like talking on a traditional phone. It sounds almost as good, if not. Now, how can we get this? is the question I can hear flying through all the minds of those who will get this letter. It is quite simple for those of us who have the Oralux system installed on our hard drives. We have to use the apt-get program. First of all, let's make sure that our package lists are updated and in good order. apt-get update Depending on the kind of network connection you have, this can take from a couple of minutes to the better part of a couple of hours. However, when the process is finished, your system will know what packages are currently available from the Debian archives, from which the next step will retrieve the programs we need. Now, before we get started, we need to be sure that we are running the alsa drivers. When you installed Oralux on your system, you needed to have said knoppix alsa as the cheat code before the system started to load. This would have insured that you had the right drivers. Linphone will not work properly with the kernel drivers, often called OSS. You will only hear things coming in, and others will not hear you. You mustn't and I repeat, MUST NOT use the OSS drivers. If you need to re-install, be sure you do this and get all your other programs back on there to avoid confusion. Now, let's take the next step into this brave new world. apt-get install linphone Apt-get will go through its little routine of building dependency trees from the package lists and then it will start. There will be a cascade of packages you didn't ask for. These are all dependencies of linphone. If you don't install all of these, strange as they might seem, linphone will not work. There is no real need to install anything under either suggested packages or recommended packages unless you really want to. Now, linphone is in your system and ready to run. This is where things can get just a little fuzzy, but I promise to help anyone who has a problem with this. As I stated earlier, there are two ways to use linphone/linphonec. You can use it with a "sip server" or without. When you first run linphonec, for example, the program will determine, from your internet connection, a few things that it will need to run right. Most of this does not depend on the connection, only the first thing, that under [net] in the top of the config file. All of the rest of the file's items can be left alone except for the recording level, which will need to be set to 100 to insure the best signal possible. This is what was determined when Gilles and I tested it. Now, depending on your processor speed, the kind of connection you are using, and the amount of other processing your machine is doing, you might need to change the audio jitter compensation value as well. All of these are in the augomatically generated .linphonec file in the home directory. Remember to save this each time you make any changes. You are now in business to use linphonec with no "sip server." You will need to use ifconfig to get your ip or internet protocol address, the address other machines use to contact yours. If you are on a dial-up system, you might want to use the "sip server" to avoid having to do this all the time because your ip address is different each time you log on-line. When you get this address, send it in an e-mail to the person you want to talk to. Watch it!! You will both be in each other's machines while using linphonec with no "sip server." There is no encryption on linphone or linphonec, so do not use it for anything you would like to encode before transmitting. Crackers can get the audio streams if they want to. There is nothing to stop them from transmitting malicious code to you over a sip connection, so this is the least recommended way to use this program. With the graphical linphone, this configuration is in a different place, just look for it when you have started linphone or linphonec up. Now, the much safer and preferred method of using linphone/linphonec. I personally recommend that you use a "sip server." There is one that I personally recommend to all of you who wish to use this program. Go to http://www.freeworlddialup.com They have a complete voip or Voice Over Internet Protocol system. The Session Initiation Protocol works with their system. Look at the services and features you get for free. You are completely at liberty to use them all. The only things that I have found that will cost you a little, and I plan to get them later, are fwd-in and fwd-out which are ways to have your computer phone totally replace your regular phone no matter where you are. Other than this, you can use much, if not all of the things they have on there. This is the best way to use linphone/linphonec. If you wish to use it in this way, I will be more than glad to give you a special .linphonec configuration file which is to replace the one the program generated automatically. This file's contents were all arrived at by Gilles and myself in several weeks of testing. Now, you need to be careful with the web interface on this "sip server." You might want to get a sighted person using a regular graphical browser to help you set up such features as your voice mail so that you don't encounter the problems inherant in using text-only web browsers on a system not intended to interact with them. If you are really independent-minded, however, you can use w3m as it is for most of the processing of the settings. However, when I tried to set up the voice mail system on my account, I had to upgrade w3m and this caused a little trouble, with which I will help you if you wish to do this. Anyway, once you have your account set up on there, and all of your settings as you want them, I believe you will enjoy linphone/linphonec To find more documentation on this program, especially, the graphical version, go to http://www.linphone.org where you will be able to download manuals that might help you with this version. The command line linphonec is not really documented, but I can help you with whatever problems you might have with it. Now, for those of you who simply prefer to run Oralux from the cd. You can get the next release, when it comes out and it will include linphone/linphonec. I will be glad to help all of you as well. If you use the "sip server" and, therefore, use the special file we have for the configuration of the program, don't forget to run saveconfig or whatever will be in the next release to save configuration files. This will insure that you, also, will have linphone/linphonec at your fingertips from any computer you decide to use. Well, that's about it. This is our gift to you. I and all the other members of the team hope you will get this and enjoy it. I am not sure when the next release is coming out, but, if you wish to install and use the program, have fun with it. It is really a welcome addition to the Oralux system. It just gives us more of the capabilities we have been looking for in an adaptive computer system. GOD bless all of you and Merry Christmas from the team. -- Doug Smith: C.S.F.C. Computer Scientist For CHRIST! Oralux: http://oralux.org _______________________________________________ Oralux mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freearchive.org/mailman/listinfo/oralux
