Beer Berry 2000

Gnome 2.4 comes standard with GnomeMeeting 0.98.5, a free video conferencing application. I have used the iSight / iChat and MSN Messenger with a webcam for a while now, and so here is how GnomeMeeting compares these other options.
My $ 35 USB Creative WebCam Pro works fine with all Unix I’ve tried it with (BSD, Mandrake, JDS, RHL / Fedora, Slackware, etc., but not on Mac OS X) and GnomeMeeting loads it successfully too. The first time you run GnomeMeeting it runs a wizard that sets your microphone, video and personal information.

The GnomeMeeting window consists of a vertical toolbar, video window and its controls, a chat view and a separate window that displays the server you are currently connected and its users. For me to get up and running I had to go to the preferences panel and check “IP Translation” option as I’m behind a firewall. GnomeMeeting require some ports to be open on your firewall properly work. In the Preferences panel, you can set several options that additional personal information, audio / video settings, etc.

To start chatting, you must connect to a bulletin folder (the “server”). By default GnomeMeeting directory is ils.seconix.com and search for all users usually reveals between 90 and 180 visible members online, depending on time of day (some users choose to be hidden). You can engage in a video chat and if something goes wrong in this regard (eg, poor firewall setup prevents connection), there is always failsafe traditional text chat.

GnomeMeeting has the ability to connect to NetMeeting servers, but it requires a membership to these servers. Additionally, the live video-phone via IP number (using a telephone-like keypad) or act like a real phone through third-party hardware.

GnomeMeeting’s nice to get in touch with other UNIX users. It brings a modern sense of “Linux / Unix user group” franchise. This is how I actually met my girlfriend Stella from Athens, Greece. Something of a surprise that the first Greek person I found on the web via GnomeMeeting happen to a female Slackware user!

There are a few drawbacks GnomeMeeting moment: It’s very hard to find online chatters willing to chat with you. 50% of the time they will not answer your call, 30% of the time they will time out while the rest of the time GnomeMeeting wrong to say that the other person does not run GnomeMeeting (although they do). In my opinion, Gaim and GnomeMeeting is the same project. To have such a small community of 200 users are … romantic, but not practical. It does not warrant the broad success of the project. Moreover, people like video conferences with family members also, and most of them tend to run MSN or Yahoo! ‘s web camera services (especially MSN). GnomeMeeting, with the help of Gaim and some reverse engineering, could do it. Meanwhile, Microsoft NetMeeting put to sleep and then NetMeeting interoperation is probably irrelevant.

Another problem is that it is necessary to adjust the firewall settings, because if you do not have access to it can be difficult to work with GM as intended. MSN Messenger and OSX is iSight not have such strict requirements, though they require some ports open to work even better on a “normal” Firewall setup. Most of the time they work as intended, but with GnomeMeeting you never know if you will not be able to get video, or to get video, but do not get sound each time, etc. It really depends on per connection basis, and how the other person is setup and how he / she has arranged for audio / video plugins.

Another problem which is really a display driver problem more than a GM one: my camera needs adjustment of the brightness all the time. GM guys said this is a driver error (OV511 driver) and I would need to e-mail to the author of this driver.

A nice addition to GnomeMeeting would be the ability to save as. MPG or other video format your own video or video chat (you never know if you want to leave your will in a video format, or just to shoot something and then burn it as VCD and send it to family).

Overall GnomeMeeting is one of the very interesting Linux / Unix apps for video conferencing, and while there are still problems here and there it is a sexy and fun app to run. It’s not as polished usability-wise as the iSight / iChat combo, but it does the job. Get a supported cheap web camera if you already have one (you do not really need the latest and the greatest) and come join the * nix geeks online! You never know, you can meet the love of your life over there (yes, it was IRC for me back in the day, but the technology evolves, now you can see who you are talking to .

As always, it GnomeMeeting project needs more developers, so if you’re into that kind of development fun, step in and help. GnomeMeeting 1.0 will be featuring plugins ALSA support, better address book and setup wizard.