Who says Linux doesn’t have the apps? Computer-based VoIP clients are a great convenience and a big money-saver, letting people on the same VoIP service talk directly over the computer. The ability to talk directly to someone computer-to-computer has matured. I remember when this capability first appeared, and it was something of a curiosity. Broadband in the home hadn’t quite caught up to VoIP technology yet, and while the methodology was in place, not enough people had broadband to make it work. The first time I had heard of it, I had a very fuzzy conversation with my cousin in Europe. We thought it was cool, and that we were terribly sophisticated to be doing such a thing, but I could understand only about half of what he was saying. And it wasn’t because of his broken English, either. Today when I have a computer-to-computer conversation, it’s just as clear as a regular PSTN phone call.
But we wouldn’t want the Linux camp to miss out on all the fun. Introduced in 2008, Google’s voice and video chat is one of the Internet giant’s top applications. Google made an announcement last week that it’s now available for Ubuntu and other Debian-based distributions.
