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Skype 2.0 Beta for Linux: Great Social(ist) Revolution

Posted by berkus, Wed Nov 07 17:14:00 UTC 2007

A great time is upon us. A time of change. A time of revolution.

In the past, we have struggled in a world of glass panes and fruits. Forbidden from seeing the world around us. Denied the possibility of showing who we are. But today, our eyes open. We are not afraid to see, and we are not afraid to show ourselves.

Indeed this is a time of excitement, but it’s also a time where we can share our happiness, our sadness, our anger and our love, for video has arrived to Skype for Linux.

This release is not just a revolution for us in Linux, but a revolution for the Skype world at large. No longer are we, the people of Linux - the workers of the world, prevented from socialising in the same way as our peers.

So join us in this revolution, join us by downloading Skype 2.0 Beta for Linux today.

Read on for less of my speech and more technical information about this release.

ps/ This post is courtesy of Andy, and today is 7th of November if you haven’t noticed yet.

pps/ Just a bit of known issues with video stuff:

  • Using uvc webcam driver with new Logitech cameras can cause a split video effect which does not recover until you restart video. [this is fixed in internal versions]
  • Using uvc webcam driver with ATi fglrx graphics card driver results in a memory leak and potential crash currently. [this is fixed in internal versions]
  • gspca webcam driver can crash sometimes during webcam initialisation (which can also happen during the call).
  • Using a display driver with only a single Xv port means you can only see video in one direction currently.
  • Using a display driver with no Xv support will not work at all.
  • ATi fglrx driver versions before 8.42.3 may crash your X server and lock up video during the call.
  • ATi fglrx driver version 8.42.3 may crash your X server and lock up video at the beginning of the call.

5 comments | Filed Under: skype | Tags: skype

Viva Trolls

Posted by berkus, Tue Sep 25 20:12:00 UTC 2007

Worked yesterday and today on extremely nasty deadlock on D-BUS.

Even though I don't like D-BUS (and this I am saying lightly), I spent whole night testing this issue and came up with a test program that reproduced the case sensibly. Then I turned to Trolltech for help and Thiago was extremely helpful in diagnosing the problem and providing hints on proper solution. Thank you very much Thiago!

Also Trolls were so nice to send me a fresh Russian translation of their "C++ programming with Qt4" book by Jasmin Blanchette and Mark Summerfield. Thank you guys, I'll sure enjoy (proof)reading it :)

0 comments | Filed Under: kde skype | Tags: skype

Progress! What? Progress!

Posted by berkus, Thu Sep 20 18:42:00 UTC 2007

Today I sweeped the last pack of bugs on our way towards the golden 1.4 client. This includes several crashes when using public API and some audio fixes.

Tomorrow I expect to go through a list of not-so-critical-but-nevertheless-nice-to-have-fixed bugs and fix some just for fun.

It will take some time for testing and maybe a couple iterations of "fixing the fixes" before we put this 1.4 out, but gosh it's close!

4 comments | Filed Under: skype | Tags: skype

Progress? What progress?

Posted by berkus, Fri Sep 14 21:38:00 UTC 2007

This week I did for Skype: nearly nothing. My coughing is still bad but I might be getting better (just to get worse again).

We started a fancy side project to radically improve Skype UI. Can't tell you how much better it will become (I just don't know yet!).

After Trolls left, I've been mostly sleeping, but it seems that I'm going to Trolltech devdays - if you want to come and smash a huge white creamy cake into my face or just talk about some Qt and Skype stuff - I'll be waiting for you in Munich this October ;)

And, erm, The Gold Release - it's some day Real Soon Now(tm).

0 comments | Filed Under: skype | Tags: skype

Trollhelp

Posted by berkus, Tue Sep 11 17:14:00 UTC 2007

Last two days've been full of hacking and testing.

Two folks from Trolltech came to our office to give us some assistance with Skype and Qt4. We spent wonderful two days hacking and actually managed to achieve our goals!

Soon I'll dive into finishing and polishing what we did. Hopefully, it will not take too long time for you to see it.

I hope to see more trolls during the DevDays in Munich this October.

0 comments | Filed Under: skype | Tags: skype

Towards world domination

Posted by berkus, Fri Sep 07 16:40:00 UTC 2007

Converting skype to not use libsigc++ was indeed easy with the first, simpler, approach. Polling code now works, skype runs, and I have a slight feeling it eats a little bit less cpu when idle. Must be my imagination.

Since it's Friday, instead of working on my bugfixes pipeline I ventured into uncharted territory of Qt for Windows and compiling with Microsoft compiler. Qt itself builds and works fine, but I want to build Skype with it. I started cleaning up my code, commenting out pieces that are too hard to rewrite correctly for gcc and msc this time, marking other things that need to be changed and went on into about a quarter of my source code. Then I hit some more complex things and left this excercise for later. I'm looking a Windows programming specialist around the office, so we can sit and go through the hoops together.

Now I'm going to sketch some ideas for future Skype UI, I'm sure it's gonna be more than just fun.

Oh, and mushroom soup was excellent. Thanks.

0 comments | Filed Under: skype | Tags: skype

libsigc++ mess

Posted by berkus, Thu Sep 06 21:20:00 UTC 2007

libsigc++ proved to be quite a messy thing, so I decided to make life easier and get rid of it.

After spending a few hours doing cleanup and replacing it with sigslot I realized that sigslot doesn't have a cross-thread dispatching facility :)

Well, there are two ways: simpler one - use the provided possibility to poll library events in UI thread, or write a dispatcher for sigslot, which is going to be no less messy than sigc++ itself.

Simpler is better I think.

2 comments | Filed Under: skype | Tags: skype