A new Skype for Linux update has been released by Microsoft ... the developers have explained that, starting with this version of Skype 4.3, the direct ALSA support has been dropped and users will need to use PulseAudio 4.0 for the best audio experience.
According to the changelog, the new cloud-based Group Chat experience has been implemented into the software, the file transfer support is now much better when using multiple devices at once, the accessibility for blind and visually impaired users has been improved, PulseAudio 3.0 and 4.0 support has been added, and numerous bug fixes have been implemented.
--
[Ed's Note: The AC also included the following - I decided to leave it in.]
The cynic inside me finds it hard to swallow the words "best audio experience" just because Microsoft said so. If I was to add a group of tags to my story submission, I would include:
Linux-Audio | Microsoft | Lennart-Poettering | RedHat | DoD | Skype | Backdoor | Walled-Garden | NSA | Cloud | Elitist-Development-Model | Faithful-Brownshirt-Of-The-Oligarchy | If-Infiltrated-EQ-1-Then-Manipulate
Related Stories
On Aug 5, without previous warning, Skype locked out all Mac users running Leopard or earlier versions of OS-X. Those customers are given instructions to update, but following them does not solve the problem. The Skype Community Forum is currently swamped with complaints. A company representative active on the forum said "Unfortunately we don't currently have a build that OS X Leopard (10.5) users could use" but did not answer the question whether they intend to provide one or not. It seems Microsoft shows their true colors. But users may perhaps try Tox, ekiga, linphone, gnutelephony, Jitsi or other replacements.
In previous news Skype ditched ALSA for PulseAudio and it's vital for NSA.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Lazarus on Thursday June 19 2014, @09:07PM
This place doesn't have to be another Slashdot.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday June 19 2014, @09:10PM
Does too, if bananas are involved. Pulse? Calling Dr. McCoy!
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday June 19 2014, @09:51PM
I'd have to agree with the NSA and "Brownshirt" tags though. Microsoft have been *far* too accommodating ... angling for tasty government contracts no doubt.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday June 20 2014, @03:21AM
I was reading some of the documents on Cryptome [cryptome.org] the other day where the NSA in one of their talking point slides was all gleeful about having total access to Skype as well a Microsoft's Skydrive/OneDrive.
Just recently, Microsoft changed their terms of service saying they won't use you OneDrive storage to send advertising.
My how magnanimous. They give it all to the NSA but stand proud and strong against those evil advertisers.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Geotti on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:36PM
I for one... like tags. If used properly, they structure information and could help us go a long way on our quest to the semantic web.
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Friday June 20 2014, @04:20AM
It's a long time since I've heard that term!
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Friday June 20 2014, @10:13AM
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday June 20 2014, @02:54PM
A lot of research is still being done, and a lot of progress has already been made. (Sorry, no time for sources, but many universities have groups and/or institutes devoted to this.)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 19 2014, @09:16PM
because some distros (including Slack) still do listen to Biff bark via ALSA.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @03:56AM
> because some distros (including Slack) still do listen to Biff bark via ALSA
Nobody knows who biff was anymore. I bet soylent's average age is over 50.
(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Friday June 20 2014, @11:01AM
Wasn't biff the guy with the long signature quote?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 23 2014, @01:03PM
I spent many hours "fixing" audio in Slackware installs in the 1990s, reading a HOWTO: that basically said "well, it's bunch of frivolous crap if you ask me, right up there with color monitors, but if you must listen to Biff bark, here's how you get your audio system working...."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07 2014, @02:31PM
I thought it was Biff Naked the rocker.
(Score: 1) by cykros on Friday June 20 2014, @06:16AM
Yea, but lucky for Slackware users, half of us are still running around upgrading nothing except security patches.
And when it comes to skype, there's only one properly made security patch anyway... "removepkg skype".
Full Disclosure: I actually use both Slackware and Pulseaudio, having configured and installed it myself. And holy HELL it works better than any single prepackaged copy of it I've come across in any of the major distros...not to mention handy with my multiple soundcard setup with various outputs.
(Score: 1) by meisterister on Thursday June 19 2014, @10:17PM
Is there any good reason for this or is it just one of the fairly useless changes Microsoft has made to skype lately?
I want my (finger) and (mooning) back!
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jasassin on Thursday June 19 2014, @10:36PM
I'm not sure if this is still the same but when something (let's say quake) was running nothing else could play sound. Maybe they want Skype to work and users also to be able to receive audio notifications from other applications. I haven't used Linux in awhile, so it's my only guess.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 1) by meisterister on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:01PM
A quick search turned up the following:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1794581 [ubuntuforums.org]
It appears that they're trying to communicate with hardware on a lower level. PulseAudio doesn't always work well as a middle-man for audio...evidently. I don't see why Skype would need the additional quality.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2, Informative) by meisterister on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:05PM
Looks like I got it in reverse order. I neglected to note that Skype is moving the other way around. They're going from a better quality but harder to use system to a lower quality but easier to use system...
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @10:37AM
Well, that page explains trading higher latency for more flexibility. As far as I understand, Jack has both low latency and high flexibility. So why did Ubuntu not change to Jack instead?
(Score: 1) by cykros on Friday June 20 2014, @06:20AM
This only applies if A) dmix is not configured with ALSA or B) the software in question doesn't play nice with dmix. Most modern software works fine with dmix, which is why it's not an issue for most Slackers to still be using ALSA instead of Pulseaudio. And given the stability variation between ALSA and most copies of pulse I've come across in the big distro repo's, I entirely applaud Volkerding for his decision to keep it outside of the default Slackware environment.
That said, I use it anyway, due to ease of use with multiple soundcards (HDMI and wireless headphones). Simple enough to install via sbopkg, but I'm glad it's not forced down my throat.
(Score: 4, Informative) by caseih on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:17PM
Furthermore, it brings Linux audio finally closer to par with what users have had on Windows for many years. I regularly find it convenient to attach different audio streams to different devices, something that was impossible before PulseAudio on Linux. For example, Skype could be connected to a USB headset, while Clementine plays music out my normal speakers. Many of us use and like PulseAudio. For me it's certainly a lot better than the situation in previous years. OSS was barely passable at the time, Alsa was okay, but some sound cards could multiplex inputs, others could not. It was quite a mess.
All that said, if Skype simply supported Alsa, PulseAudio could automatically work with it using the Alsa interface PulseAudio exports.
(Score: 1) by forkazoo on Friday June 20 2014, @01:05AM
To be fair, that was never impossible without Pulse. Doing it with Alsa just required sacrificing the blood of a goat to a barely documented and unintuitive text file that did unexpected things in antidocumented ways unreliably. But, I had Skype ringing to analog speakers while I talked on a bluetooth headset once apon a time. I couldn't possibly figure out how to do it again, unless I was reading the man page on a Ley line during an equinox. But it was possible.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Friday June 20 2014, @01:54AM
WHen boiled down to it, sound on any *nix system is crap. Most (but not all) commerical UNIXs use Open Source System as do the BSDs. Linux used to use this before migrating to to ALSA, which has proven to be an extremely complicated, poorly documented API. Most what you could do with pulse could be done with ALSA directly, but it was so incredibly difficult, I'm not suprised that almost nothing did. I remember pre-pulse days the "fun" in trying to make a Bluetooth Headset. While I dislike Pulse for quite a few reasons, I can at least say it made audio SANER by at least been a decently documented API and having ALSA/OSS wrappers.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by TheLink on Friday June 20 2014, @02:53AM
(Score: 2) by caseih on Friday June 20 2014, @05:03AM
No, apparently not. OS X has a sound system that is sort of a hybrid of Jack and PulseAudio, from what I've read (on Lennart's blog). Apple doesn't have the problems that other unix's have. They only support a fixed set of sound chips, so they have excellent drivers, and then they expose this to apps through CoreAudio which handles multiplexing, channels, etc.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday June 20 2014, @02:30PM
Apple does, but there's RME, Alesis, Echo, etc., etc., etc. But as expected with (semi-)pro-gear, drivers are excellent there as well.
These usually tie into CoreAudio as well and work just fine for system output as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @09:13AM
What are those reasons? (Honest question; I don't personally have any preference between PulseAudio and ALSA)
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:31PM
My homebrew distro SubLinux doesn't have Pulseaudio, by design. Just ALSA.
Now I'm stuck with Skype 4.2 unless I want to trade in my freedom for a pair of Borg implants.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 3, Informative) by Blackmoore on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:43PM
um. if you were using Skype (at all) it was monitored. doesnt matter what your sound quality was.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday June 20 2014, @01:03AM
I think Subsentient referred to pulse audio (and SystemD, and other stuff "masterminded" by Poettering [wikipedia.org]).
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday June 20 2014, @01:06AM
No, I don't know, why I capitalized systemd.
(Score: 1) by fnj on Friday June 20 2014, @02:26AM
On both ends of the word yet.
(Score: 2) by bugamn on Friday June 20 2014, @02:34AM
I think the point is that he will be monitored with Skype whether he uses Pulse Audio or Alsa.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 20 2014, @12:57AM
So Microsoft traded smooth sound API for a stuttering one. That is unless you spend money on an insane specification machine. Added to the mix is that Microsoft is a willingly in bed with TLAs.
So what alternatives is there to Skype? software that can communicate with users on Windows and Linux is preferable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @01:18AM
Google Voice (or whatever it is called) in Gmail. Free Voice to Pots/Cell calls in North America, don't know about other places though.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 20 2014, @01:54AM
ekiga [ekiga.org] - former gnomemeeting - stable
linphone [linphone.org] - SIP softphone
gnutelephony + GNU SIP Witch [gnutelephony.org] - a bit more complicated, but full control over the "phone exchanges" one uses (i.e. if you choose to run your own with your friends).
Jitsi [jitsi.org] - (may be slow on scarce-resourced desktops, written in Java. However...) IEFT found it good enough to be used as one of their tools [ietf.org] for remote collaboration
goober [goober.com] - non-free software, free gooble-2-gooble, reasonable rates to phones. As with Skype, you either trust them or you don't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Konomi on Friday June 20 2014, @06:06AM
Please be careful using tox it uses a huge amount of bandwidth in it's current form and can easily chew through anywhere from 30 to 60gb in a month.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday June 20 2014, @02:47PM
Jitsi is teh shiznit, and I dislike Java.
Tox, however, looks very promising, though I'd like it more if they would have used XMPP (guess, we'll have to bridge these networks).
(Score: 2) by joekiser on Friday June 20 2014, @02:19AM
Viber has a 64-bit Linux client and works on any phone, as well as any PC.
Debt is the currency of slaves.
(Score: 1) by cykros on Friday June 20 2014, @06:26AM
Jitsi [jitsi.org] does ZTRP p2p encrypted voice/video chat and xmpp, with builtin OTR encrypted messaging. And it's crossplatform. The only catch? It's java.
Definitely worth a look; I use it regularly,
(Score: 2) by tomtomtom on Friday June 20 2014, @08:26AM
Is there a decent Android ZRTP client which can do video? That's been the main thing that has kept me using Skype over Jitsi.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday June 20 2014, @02:39PM
Yes, Jitsi.
It's absolutely excellent, and if you go through the (little) trouble of setting up your own XMPP server (I recommend and favor prosody [prosody.im]) and become part of the federation, you can use Jitsi Videobridge [jitsi.org] to talk to people without an installed Jitsi client.
(Score: 1) by cykros on Tuesday June 24 2014, @07:17AM
Here [digitaltrends.com] would be a decent place to start looking. Redphone was developed in part by Moxie Marlinspike, whose reputation thus far has been unspoiled by any NSA affiliations, and who thus far has put out some pretty impressive products. Looks like Jitsi supports android too, though I don't recall it being in the play store. May be hosted on their site. Some of what the Ostel project is doing looks pretty neat as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @07:39AM
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/priority-projects/highpriorityprojects#Replaceskype [fsf.org]
(Score: 1) by khedoros on Thursday August 07 2014, @08:08PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @01:31AM
too bad I don't use microsoft software (including skype)
otherwise I could have ditched skype now.
It is hard to start boycotting things you don't use anyway :-(
and it's closedsource right? ewww....
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday June 20 2014, @04:45AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 29 2014, @09:13PM
Microsoft behaves like assholes and get the rap for it. News at 11..
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday June 29 2014, @10:10PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday June 20 2014, @05:02AM
Could someone ask in their forum/comments-section to the rationale behind ditching the soundsystem that exists in almost all distros for something that isn't as common?
(and be polite about it, while asking why they basically reduced the number of distros skype4.3 will have voice-functionality)
(In order to comment Skype requires login with either facebook, twitter or wordpress - I use neither)
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Friday June 20 2014, @01:02PM
They want the mainstreamiest users, which is all they're likely to get anyway. If Ubuntu uses Pulse, that's ought to be enough.