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Skype Linux Alpha Disappoints |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Monday, 07 May 2007 |
Peer to peer communications provider Skype has released a
tentative upgrade to the Linux version of its softphone client
software, but users are not particularly happy with the progress.
Feedback on the page the company has announced Skype for Linux is not very positive and the early reports on Linux Devices are not particularly flattering about the progress made toward the next version.
"This is a release for Linux
developers who live on the bleeding edge of technology, not users who
like to balance precariously on technology's leading edge," it says in part.
Everybody
accepts, however, that this is just an alpha release, which means its a
very early copy of the code and only suitable for those really living
on the bleeding edge, but even so, posters to the Skype announcement
page show a fair amount of disappointment with the features list touted
for Skype For Linux version 1.4 compared to the progressed made on the
Windows and Mac client software solutions.
Releasing the
Alpha code, Skype says the main changes over the 1.3
version include a major overhaul of the user interface and improvements
in the audio quality. Calls are now contained in a separate window and
chat history can e loaded in time-specific increments.
Other things
like the top menu bar is removed meaning users can access the Main Menu
by
clicking on the ‘cog wheel' down the bottom left of the client, or by
right-clicking on the system tray icon and users can access Add/Search
by clicking on the Green + button in the bottom-left corner.
What's
missing in the alpha release is significant. Contact List Groups,
Create new account, no indication of Undelivered chat messages; no way
to mark all events as read/viewed;alertsoff in chats does work as
expected; OSS support (likely to return later) and at this stage there
is not even an install routine for the software, users need to "simply
move the ‘skype' executable from the archive into /usr/bin and the
sounds into /usr/share/skype/sounds. Also there's no API.
To be fair, we'll say it again - this is alpha software. But users are not impressed.
"Honestly,
I am quite disapointed with this alpha. There were three main
features asked - video calls, sms sending and 64bit version. Nothing is
discussed here, so it is nice, that you made some "nice" changes in the
UI, but I think it is really time for me, to ask my friends to switch
to wengophone (which has all the features mentioned and even includes
few things even win version of skype does not). You can be good choice
for windows users, but linux version development is far too slow,
sorry,[sic]" writes one visitor to the Skype announcement page.
What
seems to concern users is that there's no mention of these functions
even being available in the next release. Video, in particular. It
remains to be seen whether this is just because it's alpha software or
because there's just no plans to support video on the Linux platform at
this time.
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