Re: substitute for Skype

[Csepp <raingloom@riseup.net>]

Akib Azmain Turja <akib@disroot.org> writes:

> [[PGP Signed Part:Undecided]]
> Benjamin Slade <beoram@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Depending on the exact use case, there are some other possibilities
>> that don't run "natively" on Guix, but are still free software and
>> could be installed from Flatpak or Nix. E.g. the Signal client for
>> desktop and Matrix Element.
>>
>> Though, actually, I think the Nheko client for Matrix (available as
>> a Guix package) also has voice/video call support though I haven't
>> tried it before.
>>
>> --Ben
>
> What about XMPP (Jabber)?  Dino, a XMPP client, supports encrypted video
> chat from version 0.3, and it's packaged in Guix.  As XMPP is
> decentralized, the users don't need to have an account on your server.

XMPP and Matrix are both federated, if your guests don't already have
accounts somewhere, they will need to register somewhere.

There is work on making Matrix fully peer to peer, but it's not yet done.

Tox and Jami are fully peer to peer, so you only need a client, no
server needed.  When I last used Tox it kind of sucked if you wanted to
log in from multiple machines, so, keep that in mind if you want
persistent text chat as well.
Matrix solves this issue, you can log in from any number of clients,
even simultaneously.
XMPP... well if you want encryption, it's pretty janky.  OMEMO became
desynced for me with both Dino and Gajim and never recovered, so new
messages could not be decrypted by all participants.  Based on that, I
would recommend against XMPP for persistent chat rooms.
Of course if you only use Dino for video chat and don't care about chat
history, this is less of an issue.