Google lands Gmail video chat on Linux Google has introduced a Linux incarnation of the online voice and video chat client that integrates with Gmail and other Google services. In a blog post, the company says that Linux support was its top video chat request. "If you’ve been wanting to use voice and video chat on Linux," the post reads, "then we have good news for …
Running the new plugin under Ubuntu Hardy (2.6.23-24 kernel) with the ALSA audio manager is borked.
On system boot, audio works fine, in and out. But when Gmail is launched with the new chat binaries installed I get video and I can hear just fine, but my audio input is dead for the rest of the session, requiring a reboot to get it back.
Getting there, though. Not quite better than nothing, but getting there.
As long as Gmail Talk (or whatever they're calling it) is running, the service will not restart. It dies whenever the Talk system tries to access it with a (console) error about a non-object being passed ... or something about an object ... I don't have the system handy to check, just now.
I'm not waiting around, though ... when they fix it, they'll fix it. I see lots of Linux users with similar errors in the Google help forums. I'll just continue to use Pidgin or Empathy, as I have been doing. Just passing along info ...
Oh ... and I'm running Ubuntu 10.4 Lucid Lynx, at this point, no longer Hardy Heron. Sorry. Old habits, and all ...
I presume Google will be using some sort of speech to text technology as storing all these conversations in audio would be using a lot of storage. Probably a frame capture or two from the video and some face recognition software to get names to attch to the text too.
Then again, you can always get plastic surgery in addition to changing your name, so no harm done.
When do we get a 'doing nothing but evil' icon?
As far as I can tell Jingle is peer to peer, at least on the desktop client. VoIP is just a add-on service that makes it more likely that you will be using using the email and XMPP-IM services that can have ads served to them.
The only "doing nothing but evil" is your misplaced paranoia. It should be redirected at some other, actual Googevil methings...
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