Linux & Ekiga Here I Come!
It's been a long time coming, but I finally decided to take the plunge over to Linux. To make a long story a bit shorter I ended up with a nice new Acer laptop in our Thailand office. It came with Windows Vista Home Premium. We all know how slow Vista is. Home Premium though might be a lighter version. It looks really good too as I used it for an hour or two before I took the Linux plunge.
At Diamondcard we are all Unix users except for myself. I now had a new laptop in our office without a person to use it and I figured this is the perfect time to try Linux. I downloaded the latest SUSE 11.0 and burned it to DVD. The burning part was more complicated than installing Linux. I finally got it on the DVD and out went Vista and in came Linux.Took less than 45 minutes. I remember reinstalling Windows many years ago and that took 6 hours with a paid tech next to me the entire time.
Once I got Linux installed it was time to update things and install some programs. Its really easy. You can search and choose by clicking on the programs you want and they are installed without any problems. The only issue was getting the wifi connection working. I had to play with it a bunch of times to get the WEP wifi password working. It finally got going.
I have Linux up and running and feeling like a million dollars. What's next? Since Ekiga is the #1 Linux softphone on the planet and Diamondcard is the #1 provider of worldwide VOIP service to Ekiga users I figured its time to try it out :) Considering we get signups all the time and users always asking about Ekiga it might be a good idea to see how it works myself :) That SIP: in the Ekiga dial line throws us Windows users for a loop. I just ignore it and put the number I want to dial after it. It seemed to work.
Setting up the Diamondcard account in Ekiga was about 15 seconds. The one thing I missed was the NETWORK INTERFACE setting. It should be set to the WLAN choice since I am on wifi. Took about 15 minutes to figure that one out. I had to use Diamondcard technical support to get it resolved :)
The next issue was low volume and my microphone wasn't working. That took about 25 minutes. I had to play around with kmix sound settings. Finally got the sound good and the mic also started to work. Ekiga is a piece of cake to set up. If a Linux newbie like myself can get Ekiga working in 30-45 minutes then it should be no problem for real Linux users. I remember when Linux was only a command line interface. Now it looks like Windows and no viruses to boot.
Next up is getting the webcam working and video stream.