We've just released updated Skype for Linux. Featuring screensharing and lots of nice fixes. Audio improvements I did were long awaited – now AGC works better and selecting separate devices for calling and notification sounds works as supposed to.
Check out the official blog post here.
Posted by berkus, Wed Jan 20 15:42:00 UTC 2010
Posted by berkus, Fri Aug 28 03:58:00 UTC 2009
Several hours ago with a warm fuzzy feeling I announced that we've finally released new Skype for Linux Beta.
We decided to call it "Betta than nufin". Don't think because we don't like it, we really do. But we're a sarcastic bunch and love a bit of the drama.
It's good new release bringing to wider audience some features that we have been using internally for quite a long time and got used to them, for you they will look like all new. Please, take a good look at them with your fresh eyes and tell us what you think.
We've opened several specific threads on the forum for you, if your feedback falls into one of these existing categories, please post it there. It will be easier for us to track new feedback when it's gathered together.
You can jump straight to these topics:
We decided to call it "Betta than nufin". Don't think because we don't like it, we really do. But we're a sarcastic bunch and love a bit of the drama.
It's good new release bringing to wider audience some features that we have been using internally for quite a long time and got used to them, for you they will look like all new. Please, take a good look at them with your fresh eyes and tell us what you think.
We've opened several specific threads on the forum for you, if your feedback falls into one of these existing categories, please post it there. It will be easier for us to track new feedback when it's gathered together.
You can jump straight to these topics:
- General feedback
- Video feedback
- PulseAudio feedback
- ALSA feedback
- or post a new one here.
Posted by berkus, Fri Aug 14 07:33:00 UTC 2009
I want to congratulate my Turkish friends with Pardus 2009 release. This is the best KDE 4 integration work I've ever seen. And it runs smooth on my wife's ages old laptop, too!
Thank you very much, guys!
Thank you very much, guys!
Posted by berkus, Sun May 10 11:50:00 UTC 2009
My first Linux experience was with Slackware 2.0, back in 1997. Then I quickly switched back to Windows camp and been out of the loop for a couple of years. My next Linux OS was Gentoo. I spent about 2 years in portageland before moving on to more conventional distros. After about half a year with OpenSUSE and a complete package management disaster I switched to Arch Linux and been a happy archer ever since.
Recently I however grew unsatisfied with where Arch goes and how it works (underpatched, rather poor integration work), so I ventured to look at the available options. Finding out about Pardus Linux at ELC in San Francisco was a trigger. I installed and briefly played with it. It's a solid and well-done distribution, with a lot of custom (and often much more usable than default) tools, for example Network Manager, which is very very good. Actually, I'm writing this from my Pardus install with KDE4 and going to install it for my wife soon.
Alas, Pardus is a user-oriented distro, for developer it becomes a bit cumbersome with it's outdated "stable" packages and missing some necessary development packages by default. So I went on. Right now I'm playing with installing the LFS system by the book on another laptop. It is a tedious manual bootstrap procedure, which leads me back to thinking about Gentoo. Now just checking out what's new in portageland, I found out about Paludis package management system, and Exherbo Linux - a developer oriented distro, which uses it. Now I'm going to check it out, and probably something along these lines will get my vote for running on my new macbook.
While at it, I decided to try out the infamous 64-bits Linux, first to try for myself, how problematic it is nowadays and how to help make Skype run on it natively, and second, I just love building cross-gcc. Should be rather fun!
Recently I however grew unsatisfied with where Arch goes and how it works (underpatched, rather poor integration work), so I ventured to look at the available options. Finding out about Pardus Linux at ELC in San Francisco was a trigger. I installed and briefly played with it. It's a solid and well-done distribution, with a lot of custom (and often much more usable than default) tools, for example Network Manager, which is very very good. Actually, I'm writing this from my Pardus install with KDE4 and going to install it for my wife soon.
Alas, Pardus is a user-oriented distro, for developer it becomes a bit cumbersome with it's outdated "stable" packages and missing some necessary development packages by default. So I went on. Right now I'm playing with installing the LFS system by the book on another laptop. It is a tedious manual bootstrap procedure, which leads me back to thinking about Gentoo. Now just checking out what's new in portageland, I found out about Paludis package management system, and Exherbo Linux - a developer oriented distro, which uses it. Now I'm going to check it out, and probably something along these lines will get my vote for running on my new macbook.
While at it, I decided to try out the infamous 64-bits Linux, first to try for myself, how problematic it is nowadays and how to help make Skype run on it natively, and second, I just love building cross-gcc. Should be rather fun!
Posted by berkus, Fri Jan 23 16:32:00 UTC 2009
It’s been a while since we last checked in to report on our progress with Skype for Linux, and I’m sorry to have kept you in the dark.
Here are some of the things we’ve been up to:
Here are some of the things we’ve been up to:
- We’ve completely rewritten the audio library, and have spent considerable effort transforming the existing audio code into a form more suitable for Skype. We’ve also fixed some compatibility issues with Bluetooth headsets.
- We’re also making substantial changes to the video library. We’re working to make it more stable and compatible with more webcams and X video modes.
- There is work underway to adopt some of the user interface improvements from Skype 4.0 for Windows, like the active conversations tab. We’re also considering adding the full-screen default view found in Skype 4.0 for Windows. Of course, this is still under development, but our goal is to create an easier to use interface that requires fewer clicks to accomplish the most common tasks.
- We’re also trying to be friendlier to more operating systems, in particular FreeBSD and OpenSolaris. While there is still no support for 64-bit Linux, we hope to add this during 2009.
- We’ve expanded our Linux team by hiring more skilled Linux/Qt developers, and we have more Linux vacancies to fill during the first few months of this year.
Posted by berkus, Thu Jan 22 22:15:00 UTC 2009
Been playing teeworlds with my friends lately. What a mad game! I don't really like quake2 or other FPS multiplayer shooters because it's hard for me to navigate in 3D environment projected onto my 2D monitor surface. Here it's perfect however - 2D game world is well-suited and very attractive.
If you wanna join us for a friendly DM or CTF - ping me on skype.
Posted by berkus, Sat Jan 10 15:02:00 UTC 2009
Reading up Bryan Ford's PhD thesis. Looks like my ideas for a mobile OS are quite distilled in there. Nice that I found it before inventing it all myself :)
Metta is progressing nicely - migrating threads implementation is underway, and with added inspiration from Bryan's thesis pouring through my brain cells I plan to finish it quite soonish.
Metta is progressing nicely - migrating threads implementation is underway, and with added inspiration from Bryan's thesis pouring through my brain cells I plan to finish it quite soonish.
Posted by berkus, Sat Jun 21 06:15:00 UTC 2008
The Orb - мастера многослойного звука. Взять кучу сэмплов, замешать, обработать, растянуть, заскретчить и гранулировать так, что оригинал и не узнать - это их стиль.
В Таллинском Куму они отыграли очень бодрый и плотный сет, завели не только полный пьяный зал, но и трезвого меня.
А перед ними выступало открытие этого вечера - девушка-соло-аудио-видео-проект Planning to Rock. Очень органичное сочетание звука и видео меня заворожило. Рекомендую смотреть именно видеоряд со звуком.
В Таллинском Куму они отыграли очень бодрый и плотный сет, завели не только полный пьяный зал, но и трезвого меня.
А перед ними выступало открытие этого вечера - девушка-соло-аудио-видео-проект Planning to Rock. Очень органичное сочетание звука и видео меня заворожило. Рекомендую смотреть именно видеоряд со звуком.
Posted by berkus, Fri Nov 09 07:03:00 UTC 2007
For the (N+1)th time I'm praising Trolltechs and their divine wisdom.
While hacking on Skype support for Eee I ran across a feature request to make a small system tray applet to show current power management status of the Eee camera.
The words (Q)SystemTray(Icon) obviously led me to a Qt4 path - and thanks to geniuses at ASUStek Eee has Qt4.3.0 preinstalled in full glory. So 20 minutes later this little utility was born, all in Qt4, small, handy, good lookin'.
While hacking on Skype support for Eee I ran across a feature request to make a small system tray applet to show current power management status of the Eee camera.
The words (Q)SystemTray(Icon) obviously led me to a Qt4 path - and thanks to geniuses at ASUStek Eee has Qt4.3.0 preinstalled in full glory. So 20 minutes later this little utility was born, all in Qt4, small, handy, good lookin'.
