[Slackbuilds-users] Is Ekiga being phased out of SBo

[Dave Woodfall]

On 22/02/22 13:27,
Sebastian Arcus <s.arcus at open-t.co.uk> put forth the proposition:
> I haven't been able to get Ekiga to work any more since end of March 2021
> after updating this machine to latest -current (at the time). I eventually
> managed to get it compiled and installed, but then when trying to connect to
> any sip account it crashes.
> When trying to recompile it now I noticed that ponce's SBo git repo now
> doesn't have Ekiga or Opal any more. Do I take it that Ekiga is now being
> phased out from SBo? I guess it makes sense as the upstream code hasn't been
> updated for a few years.
> I would be ok with switching to another SIP client - but haven't found any
> so far which actually work properly. Linphone installs fine, but when I try
> to add a SIP account, it just doesn't do it. No error, nothing.
> Any suggestions for a SIP client, or how to get Ekiga to work again please?
> I would prefer a client which supports multiple accounts - but frankly at
> this stage I would try anything. Thank you.

Hi Sebastian

I have been down this road in the past too, and was surprised at the
lack of a good software phone that had any kind of contacts list, or
didn't they didn't support basic things like contact groups.

I found Ekiga to be the most user-friendly phone out there (if you
can get past some of the cryptic error messages), which is why I
began maintaining it, but now I use a hardware VOIP phone + local
asterisk PBX.

Unfortunately, the developers stopped working on Ekiga many years
ago.  The problem now is that one of the dependencies fails to build
in 15.0, which renders it useless.  Linphone is probably the most,
maybe only, maintained software phone at the moment, and has been
getting better over the years.

There is also a plugin for Pidgin called SIPE (an extended version of
SIP), but I have never tested it, and don't know how compatible it is
with normal SIP:

http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/network/pidgin-sipe/

Most of the focus the past few years seems to be on hardware phones.
I recall that there were some quite good SIP apps for Android when I
used to use one, and some old Sony Ericsson feature phones can make
SIP calls and connect to the LAN by either USB or Bluetooth (like my
old Cybershot C702) if you can find a used one somewhere.

Gigaset make some fairly good SIP phones and base stations (n300)
that have all the features you'd expect from a phone, and can be
extended when combined with a local asterisk PBX running on your LAN.

I know this has drifted away from the subject, but user-friendly SIP
software have always been lacking for some reason, and proprietary
programs like skype have always been more popular unfortunately.

--
Dave