skype on XO-1.75

[Peter Robinson]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Martin Langhoff
<martin.langhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 1:15 AM,  <forster at ozonline.com.au> wrote:
>> Installing Skype on the XO-1.75 using the instructions at wiki.laptop.org/go/Skype does not work.
>
> As others have pointed out, Skype (the company) does not publish a
> "skype-for-linux, ARM version". AIUI, they will never do so, and
> probably they'll stop caring about the current skype-for-linux
> x86/x86_64 real soon.
>
> They do publish a devkit that has libraries for various platforms, and
> I've been told it has an ARM binary library. The documentation is
> interesting -- clearly they have a library to make it easy to build
> your own UI to skype; and they have Python bindings (and examples!).
>
> So if some enterprising soul wanted to sign up for their dev program
> (there's a small fee, I believe) you can look at what's inside,
> perhaps even try to run the python samples on our hw. A Python client
> means a Sugar-ish client is possible, if you want to look at the
> upside. (The downsides are well documented :-) ).

I believe there's actually a telepathy library already written that
uses this, no idea about the ARM side of things but I believe that is
what the Nokia n900 uses and its ARM based so it might even work!

What would be REALLY cool would be a Video Chat Activity for Voice
and/or Video chat. It could likely use the empathy stuff underneath
and then it could use MSN/Gtalk/jabber/etc and all the underlying
infra already there, and all the contacts etc from empathy in gnome
would just come across. I've actually had a number of queries about
this of late from interested Fedora people.

> Here I am glossing over some complications -- ARM is a bit more
> fragmented that x86, so a unified ARM version is possible, but would
> likely suck badly on all platforms. You'd want ARMv5tel for our
> current build, which would perhaps be so-so, and then ARMv7hl for the
> OS we'll prepare next year.

Maybe not as bad as you think meego has both softfp and hardfp and
supports it I think (had to be something good come out of Meego!) I'll
try to remember to have a poke when I get a spare moment.

> Similar concerns affect Flash-for-Linux on ARM and any
> performance-sensitive binary plugins you can think of.

Yea, now that is a train wreck. Might be time to look @ Lightspark

> One good piece of news is that Skype isn't the only game in town.
> Google-talk-plugin has been my friend lately, and competes with Skype
> plenty in my personal usage (it's the plugin behind gmail/gchat voice
> + video, g+ hangouts, and google's own int'l dialling service).

Agreed, I think a Video Chat Activity might be out best bet. We're
already got it on the gnome side.

Peter