[ubuntu-za] Video chat alternatives to Skype? Ekiga etc

[Chris Schoonbee]

Morgan Collett wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 12:14, Chris Schoonbee <cmschoonbee at mweb.co.za> wrote:
>   
>> Thanks for that feedback.
>>
>> Andre Hugo wrote:
>>     
>>> Empathy works great. Supports video, voice, text chat and includes
>>> screen sharing if you need to give support to a friend.
>>>
>>> I have setup my Empathy with my google account and the video quality is
>>> better than with skype in my case.
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>> That is very good news to hear.
>>
>> Forgive me if I sound a bit clueless and please correct me.
>>
>> As I understand Empathy, I need to set up an external account (eg a
>> Google account or a jabber account) somewhere ie I cannot use Empathy
>> directly to communicate with another Empathy user.
>>     
>
> Correct - Empathy is a multiprotocol chat client. It supports
> Jabber/XMPP/Gtalk, MSN, IRC, in fact anything that Pidgin supports if
> you have telepathy-haze installed which uses libpurple, the Pidgin
> backend.
>
> Jabber/XMPP/Gtalk is required for video/voice AFAIK.
>
> I haven't used Empathy for the past year or so so I can't remember the
> exact process to create a new jabber account but IIRC you can create a
> new jabber account on a jabber server while adding the account - e.g.
> username at jabber.org - jabber.org is a public jabber server.
>
>   
>> What Google account do you use?  I am confused by the info I have found
>> as to which type of Google account supports video under Linux.  Google
>> Talk sounds like the correct type of account but I have read that it is
>> the Google Mail account which actually supports video chat.
>>     
>
> A gmail account is a google talk account. The text chat built into the
> gmail web interface is Jabber, and your JID is your gmail address.
>
>   
>> Does the other party then also need a Google account?
>>     
>
> They need a Jabber or XMPP or Gtalk account. These are all effectively
> the same thing. A gmail account will do, or a @jabber.org account...
>
>   
>>> Have tried Ekiga but also could not get it working.
>>>       
>
> I haven't tried Ekiga in years but never got it working before. If
> you're behind a router that does NAT (as probably all of us are) then
> you need to do some magic to get Ekiga working through some sort of
> proxy.
>
> Empathy (Telepathy actually) uses some magic to "punch a hole in your
> firewall": http://www.collabora.co.uk/projects/libnice/
>
> Regards
> Morgan
>
>   
Thanks for that clarification, Morgan.

I have set up  a jabber.org account as you suggested.

Do you know if there is there a za jabber server at all?  And would that 
make a difference?

Regards,
Chris