
Jitsi: Open-Source Video Conferencing - reimertz
https://jitsi.org/
======
me_bx
Every year, the Jitsi team gathers at FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source
Developers European Meeting, and there are presentations about some technical
aspects of the project.

They are very lively, and do useful work.

This year, there will be a talk about Speech-to-Text in Jitsi Meet >
[https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/jitsi/](https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/jitsi/)

Happening in Brussels, Belgium on 3 & 4 February 2018 ;)

~~~
Improvotter
So unfortunate that FOSDEM is happening right at the end of finals in Belgium
when a lot of students are on holiday like me. I've had to miss 2 FOSDEMs so
far, 3rd coming up :(

~~~
kasbah
It's held on a university campus so it couldn't really be any other time.

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mrhigat9
Would be great to see it on fdroid. As it is, I can't use it without google
play.

I figured it was going to be closed up or slowly killed off after atlassian
took over. Pleasantly surprised it's doing better.

[https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-
meet/issues/1290](https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/issues/1290)

~~~
saghul
FWIW, the app does not depend on any Google Play services, so you could grab
the apk from any of those mirrors and manually install it, and if you really
want to, you could build it yourself, instructions are here:
[https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-
meet/blob/master/android/READ...](https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-
meet/blob/master/android/README.md)

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shams93
I looked at this for my project but we need to be able to do server side
recording so we went with Janus gateway instead. It's a lean and mean c
program that now supports plugins in rust. The one downside of jitsi is that
it's a large java application. I can run Janus on a raspberry pi.

~~~
paule89
I think it is an important point that it is still using java. Java once the
hero of portability is in my opionion just the hero of zero days and slow
programs.

It also would not be the software to install on my grandmas pc because of the
many important java updates which are needed. The automatic installation of a
browser plugin i don't need and which makes it even more vulnerable.

I think if Android would not be using Java it would have died years ago.

On the other hand. Jitsi still great software. Open source and all.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
> I think if Android would not be using Java it would have died years ago.

I think you're seriously underestimating the amount of enterprise software
running on Java for decades now. Not only it's not going away, but the
language itself and its ecosystem are evolving. Slowly, but in the domain of
programming languages that are actually being widely used slow progress is a
good thing.

~~~
socceroos
Anecdotally, I remember similar comments to this when the tide was shifting
away from PHP.

~~~
athenot
I'm no defensor of Java but PHP was never entrenched in Enterprise the way
Java is. It's "good enough" for most business uses who treat software as a
comodity and outsource to multiple vendors.

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DoofusOfDeath
I work remotely, and I'm always on the lookout for a video chat system with
fewer audio problems than Skype.

Anyone know of a website that _maintains_ a ranking of video chat services, in
terms of audio quality?

~~~
stfnfhrmnn
I don't know of a website that compares audio quality specifically, but I feel
this still is the greatest impediment when it comes to ANY video or audio
conference system. I get the impression that there is no system out there that
allows for decent 'full duplex' audio, equivalent to a normal conversation
where both sides might interrupt each other at times. I think this comes down
to

    
    
      a) background noise reduction
      b) echo/feedback cancellation
      c) input latency
    

I assume input latency may not be such a big issue anymore, with ultra low
latency codecs (presumably) being widespread now. Feedback cancellation is a
problem if any side of the conversation is using speakers, rather than
headphones. I guess chat services meet at the lowest common denominator,
making fairly conservative assumptions and often cutting audio aggressively.

My personal list, best to worst, in respect to my requirements above:

    
    
      Google Hangouts
      Jitsi
      WhatsApp audio call
      Skype

~~~
dorfsmay
I'd add

    
    
      Slack
      zoom.us
    

Both very good with different advantages for different use.

~~~
ryanianian
I think zoom is the best for 1:1 and group chats after trying a number of such
services. But there's still moments of dropped packets and confusion. You
can't blame Zoom for every dropped packet, but what it doesn't do well is tell
you when packets are dropped.

I wish video-chat services/clients would be totally up-front about the real-
time quality of the connection. There are natural pauses in any conversation,
and if you're always wondering whether the pause is natural or a result of a
few dropped packets, it makes for a very un-natural conversation. This could
be as simple as "last transmission received N ms ago" indicator or something,
but I'm sure there are more clever solutions.

I don't think this is an "easy" problem to solve, but it's one that I think
most video chat services seem to pretend doesn't exist. Or they implicitly
blame outside factors ("we can't fix the network") rather than helping
customers live with the realities of the internet ("we show you immediately
and in real-time when the network isn't what you expect").

(I've not put Jitsi through its paces - would love to know how Jitsi handles
the UX around dropped packets.)

~~~
j_s
Very granularly: simple tools like the Windows Task Manager Performance tab's
Ethernet Throughput graph can provide enough of a clue that a network
connection is suffering.

There are many utilities that show this info in useful form in the system
tray; perhaps some would be able to superimpose it on top of the video
conferencing software (like OnTopReplica).

~~~
ryanianian
I often have such OS-level tooling open during VC chats, but it's not natural
to have to keep an eye on another tool, especially when you want the "last
seen"/latency figure nearly instantaneously so you know the context for lack
of signal (human vs machine).

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black_puppydog
I love this project, and I really, really thought this would be _the answer_
to give when people throw me a bewildered "what, you don't use skype?!"

Sadly, even just clicking a link seems to be too far out of many people's
comfort zone, which is something that I find it very hard to wrap my head
around...

~~~
anc84
I tried to love and promote Jitsi for a long time but the desktop client is
just so darn 2000s Java-ish. Gradients, weird font-sizes, weird and few emoji.
And no mobile clients...

Jitsi Meet on the other hand is pure bliss. The website could use a single-
line explanation about what it is though. :D

~~~
shams93
Jitsi meet is a really modern react/redux app

------
motge
GNU Ring is also worth mentioning here as an alternative to Jitsi etc.:
[https://ring.cx/](https://ring.cx/)

 _Pro_ : does not depend on Java

 _Con_ : still buggy

------
saghul
Thanks for sharing! Some of us on the Jitsi team can answer some questions, if
any. Ask away!

~~~
spodek
I've been using jitsi for casual video conversations and love it. Thank you to
the team.

I also host a podcast. Can I use jitsi and record audio, separate tracks for
each party?

~~~
saghul
Thanks for the kind words!

> Can I use jitsi and record audio, separate tracks for each party?

Nope, we don't have that capability, sorry.

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erikb
The question is not if it is a video conferencing software. We have billions
of these. The question is if it can deliver a solution on the old problem of
sucking Voip connections, especially with multiple participants.

~~~
MaxLeiter
Zoom works great for me in regards to supporting voip along with video chat.

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jjhawk
Used this recently as a Skype replacement and had no complaints. Similarly
rocket.chat is a good free and open source Slack alternative that is worth
looking into if you wish to host it yourself.

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doseofreality
This is owned by Atlassian/Hipchat.

~~~
gboudrias
Do people dislike them? I only know them for open-source projects.

~~~
c2h5oh
The company I don't think so. The products.. a bit more - not because they are
bad products, but because they are enterprise products which comes with all
the enterprise baggage that makes user experience range from meh to painful

~~~
fwdpropaganda
> all the enterprise baggage that makes user experience range from meh to
> painful

Could you give specific examples?

~~~
socceroos
Jira online GUI was, comparatively, far too slow when we were evaluating tools
for our startup.

~~~
farkas
Thanks for the feedback. We have just completed some replatforming work for
Jira, and for some customers it got a lot faster, for some a bit slower.

Regardless of which camp you are in, we have dedicated teams focusing
improving Jira performance over the coming few months.

If there is any more information you can provide around your situation, we'd
love to hear it in order for us to ensure we fix your specific issue.

Scott CEO, Atlassian

------
ivan_ah
I've used this several times and worked great. The conversation was super HD.

I think it even has phone-in support (at least for a few minutes...)

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JepZ
Sadly, it still has no OMEMO support (yet):

[https://omemo.top](https://omemo.top)

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purpleidea
Cool... Two questions:

1) How easy is it to host this in your own infra, and can you do so 100%
without proprietary bits?

2) It seems there is a "call a phone feature" built-in. Neat. Does that have
any restrictions or can I use it worldwide to call my friends in other
countries.

Thanks!

~~~
saghul
1) Add our repo, apt-get install jitsi-meet and you're done! We have 0
proprietary bits.

2) That feature requires that you deploy a service of your own to facilitate
this. At this time, meet.jit.si provides this for free for 2 minutes, but if
you deploy the service to your own infra you'll need to deploy jigasi and
configure a VoIP provider yourself.

Cheers!

------
flukus
Anyone got experience with it as a skype replacement? If it has IM
functionality and desktop sharing with voice chat and it works remotely well
then I'd love to replace skype and webex.

~~~
avodonosov
So you say desktop sharing is not available in Jitsi?

~~~
nextos
Their WebRTC site at [https://meet.jit.si/](https://meet.jit.si/) works
incredibly well. It's the best I've seen, anonymous, with tons of
videoconference functionalities and nice bandwidth tracking tools.

And being WebRTC, it needs no plugins on popular desktop webbrowsers. Sadly,
mobile ones do not support WebRTC. But their app is open, and works very well.

~~~
jhoechtl
Any experience using it on Wayland Linux? I guess there it wouldn't be so easy
to grab other windows content without display manager support (which AFAIK
does not yet exist and if is specific for the implementation Gnome, KDE,
Enlightment, ...)

~~~
majewsky
AFAIK (and I can be totally wrong here) screen grabbing is part of the Wayland
protocol, _but_ most (all?) compositors restrict which processes are allowed
to use that API. For Sway (which is what I use), I've seen a separate config
file for this. So it might be worth taking a look at the documentation for
your compositor.

------
reimertz
If you want to test Jitsi Meet with other fellow hn`rs.
[https://meet.jit.si/hn](https://meet.jit.si/hn)

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shmerl
Is it using sever multiplexing, or client side one (Muji)? It kind of never
took off properly in XMPP clients.

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singularity2001
[https://meet.jit.si/test](https://meet.jit.si/test)

~~~
singularity2001
no text chat capabilities?? also video very poor compared to skype.

~~~
me_bx
There is a text chat, cf. the left-hand side of the screen ;)

~~~
singularity2001
ah, found it in hidden pannel, thx. bad UI?

~~~
singularity2001
Error occured: InvalidStateError: Peer connection is closed

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baggachipz
The site seems to have render errors on Firefox (57.0.4, osx 10.12.6):
[https://i.imgur.com/6oKH7Jw.png](https://i.imgur.com/6oKH7Jw.png)

Anyone else see that?

~~~
techwizrd
I saw that before the page had finished loading, but I don't see it now that
the page has finished loading:
[https://i.imgur.com/zKmrqti.png](https://i.imgur.com/zKmrqti.png)

~~~
baggachipz
Ah, maybe some assets were timing out because it was getting the HN Hug.

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bitL
I thought Jitsi was dead since jit.si started retiring user accounts,
rendering communication with my parents through it impossible. How do you use
it these days?

~~~
Arkanosis
You don't need an user account to use
[https://meet.jit.si/](https://meet.jit.si/) .

Alternative instance: [https://framatalk.org/](https://framatalk.org/)

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singularity2001
after invoking those dozen commands at
[https://jitsi.org/downloads/](https://jitsi.org/downloads/) I still get >$
jitsi jitsi: command not found

Oh they(I?) forgot one more `sudo apt-get install jitsi`

Still getting

Unresolved requirements: [[net.java.sip.communicator.argdelegation [135](R
135.0)] osgi.wiring.package; (osgi.wiring.package=org.jitsi.util)]

overall very poor experience.

~~~
agroot12
The page you link to
<[https://jitsi.org/downloads/>](https://jitsi.org/downloads/>) contains
(mostly) instructions on how to install jitsi-meet on your server for a self-
hosted WebRTC videoconferencing solution.

This does not include the older 'jitsi' named softphone / voip client, meaning
there will be no jitsi command that can be executed.

Installation of jitsi-meet was straightforward for me, exactly as oulined on
their page:

\- first, add their repository to your apt sources.list

\- then apt update && apt upgrade

\- then apt install jitsi-meet

You should end up with a running web server hosting your own jitsi-meet
instance.

I've installed it with a letsencrypt cert... you have to convert it to pkcs#12
with openssl and move it to /etc/jitsi/videobridge/ .

~~~
singularity2001
if any of the jitsi devs reads this: I JUST TRIED TO GET THE CLIENT.

org.osgi.framework.BundleException: Unable to resolve
net.java.sip.communicator.shutdowntimeout org.osgi.framework.BundleException:
Unable to resolve net.java.sip.communicator.plugin.simpleaccreg …

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ausjke
wow, used it a few years back, time to check it out again.

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singularity2001
site not really adblocker friendly

