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by caleblloyd 3031 days ago
Skype
4 comments

Skype for Linux was OK for years. It worked reasonably well till recently on my old laptop.

Recently (may be a few months ago), MS upgraded Skype to make it "better". I must upgrade Skype since old client stopped working as they break backward compatibility.

After upgrade, new Skype started using a lot of CPU, memory and disk IO. To the point that I can't work in browser while running Skype. If you launch Skype, it started very slowly. Since I still have HDD, I can hear scream of my HDD during heavy Skype launch. New Skype is so bloated and slow that, I had to remove it because I didn't want to torture myself and my poor old laptop.

You may say that I have to upgrade hardware but I find this argument quite annoying because Skype is just a messenger and video/voice call app. This functionality worked perfectly well for years and now just because of Skype developers, I have to upgrade my hardware in order to use the same app with the same functionality.

In the bigger picture, I see that modern apps have a tendency to be fat and bloated. And it looks like many developers are totally OK with that.

I would recommend Skype developers read this:

https://suckless.org/philosophy

To add to that, most business conferencing solutions in general are pretty bad: Skype for Business, WebEx, and Google Meet. Have seen a big pickup in Zoom which is decent.
Zoom isn't bad. I've seen companies using BlueJeans lately. HighFive (https://highfive.com/) was really great the one time I had a chance to set it up.
just yesterday 2 out of 4 people could not hear shit.
I second this.