Tell me more ×
Unix & Linux Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems.. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 2 down vote favorite

Is there a version of Wine that actually runs mainstream chat clients? I'm willing to consider commercial forks. I'd need it to support at least:

  • Yahoo
  • QQ
  • Skype (yes there's a native client but it's too outdated)

all with full voice and video support. Supporting more would be nice too.

Unfortunately all versions of Wine I've tried have either completely failed to run QQ, or botched the character encoding badly, showing Chinese correctly in some places and interpreting it as Latin-1 in other places, and I haven't gotten webcam/video chat support to work anywhere.

Is this just hopeless?

share|improve this question
Using wine is a bit dicey. But what's wrong with Pidgin and the Linux version of Skype? – Keith Apr 21 '11 at 7:39
@Keith He did say Skype for Linux was too old. A quick check myself shows Skype at 2.2 as a Beta for Linux from Skypes official website. Skype for Windows is at 5.3. – penguin359 Apr 21 '11 at 22:03
@penguin Ah, that's right. But Pidgin works great for the text only services. How about ekiga, or linphone? True it doesn't work with Skype, but skype is proprietery and IMHO should not be on the Internet. – Keith Apr 21 '11 at 22:48
@Keith I never said I agreed with his approach, but I can understanding preferring Skype over Wine if the Linux version is so under maintained. Personally, I push using Ekiga or Empathy for VoIP on Linux. In fact, I use PSI or Empathy with XMPP Transports to connect to legacy networks like MSN instead of running Pidgin to natively connect just so I can at least claim partial use of an open chat protocol. – penguin359 Apr 22 '11 at 2:23
@penguin I understand. It may be worth trying to get skype working with Wine myself. :-o – Keith Apr 22 '11 at 3:39
show 7 more comments

Know someone who can answer? Share a link to this question via email, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.