[rebolek]

> I'm tired of walking a parent through uninstalling Google Chrome

That's why I installed Linux Mint on my parent's computer, it runs Firefox, Skype and Google Earth just fine, can download photos from camera, copy DVDs and that's basically all. No shitty antiviruses they can download and I can SSH to the machine to check what's going on. Nothing, if you're interested.

[inetknght]

If you value privacy and usability, I highly suggest you to replace Skype with something else.

[rebolek]

It's not for me, it's for my father and Skype is where his friends are.

[reaperducer]

And probably Google Earth. If it's not already logging data, it will eventually.

[tomc1985]

Isn't the Linux build set to be sunset soon anyway?

[Kliment]

They have a new (and awful) linux build, so if you depend on it for anything I can recommend ghetto-skype, which is like the official linux build but actually works (it's a chromium wrapper around the web skype, with themes, which is exactly what the official one is these days, except the official one is terribly buggy).

[mathw]

Really I do not understand why Skype hasn't imploded yet with the number of awful builds they keep putting out for various operating systems. Surely the opportunity is there for someone with a good implementation of video and audio calling, cross-platform, to step in and take over.

I was looking at Google, but I no longer have any idea what the heck their strategy on Hangouts, Meet, Allo, Duo and whatever else they're producing these days is.

[Kliment]

There is exactly one feature that keeps people on skype - it has a wide installed base and recognition and all the alternatives are fragmented. There's lots of good alternatives, they all suck because there's too many of them and the user base of each one is too small. a decade ago I would have said the solution to this is federation but it obviously didn't turn out that way.