I honeslty haven’t had any issues with it. But I’m sire others are. I feel like that’s the biggest challenge since there’s a ton of distros and architectures
Where I live everything is on WhatsApp. You want to get ahold of a business: WhatsApp, friends organizing a party: WhatsApp, want to check the traffic: WhatsApp.
forgive my ignorance, I also hated teams when I had to first use it, but now other than it being a microsoft and probably data hungry app, what’s bad about it?
It has indeed improved a lot over the last 2 years or so and is now actually quite a mature product, as much as I hate to admit that about an MS product. My biggest gripes with it are its refusal to acknowledge you may be using multiple devices (to this day) and MS’s insistence that a person only do one thing at one time (can’t edit calendar items while checking a chat, for example). Their Linux app is a joke and I’m better off running it from Chrome. The phone app makes the WiFi interface crash constantly and I have to run it off 4G; it is the only app I have this issue with.
Which brings me to another gripe. Teams documentation insists that screen sharing on Linux is not supported, and sure enough you cannot see the option for it while on a call with someone. However if you are in a meeting (with however many people), the option magically appears and works absolutely perfectly.
what do you mean by the multiple devices thing? also my experience has been mostly fine on the linux app, granted I’ve never been in a teams call, so it makes sense.
Apologies for the late reply, still getting a hang of this!
By multiple devices issues I meant the following. Sometimes for example, I am on a Teams call on my phone but want to use my laptop to view screensharing stuff and join the call there too (without hanging up the phone). Teams will insist that my audio switch over to the laptop too and I have to manually disable the audio on the laptop and re-enable it on the phone. It shocks me that such a mature offering from a massive corporation still cannot figure out that I may want a screenshare/audio split onto two devices and ask me at least. Another smaller nag, if I want audio only on the phone, it will constantly bug me to tell me the incoming video is switched off. I kind of understand this however, I get that they want to let the average user know why there is no incoming video, but surely there ought to be a “leave me alone” setting for this.
The web version isn’t a standalone client like Signal, which registers as an additional device with e2e. WhatsApp web communicates with the WhatsApp app, so it doesn’t work if the phone isn’t connected to the internet (in early versions it had to be the same network, if I remember correctly).
I believe WA introduced a feature which allowed the desktop app to function standalone like Signal. Signal Desktop adds a second device with it’s own keys, so contacts send automatically messages to two devices. I’m not sure if it works the same for WA, and if they even have the feature. I don’t have a compatible desktop.
No, it’s probably because websites running in Chrome might lack the ability to detect keystrokes in the background. If they did, that’s a very very concerning security risk.
If they wanted to force you, they’d just disable the web app lmao
Viber and Discord aren’t free (libre) software and should be avoided. I’ve never ran them because of that reason. However, I’ve heard lots of complaints of proprietary mainstream applications not being great on Linux.
Admittedly haven’t tried calling with it, that being said I still need to reinstall it on my main laptop (only recently switched to Linux on that, was using an old laptop with Linux before that), so I’ll try some stuff again
WhatsApp was its own company, took advantage of an open market in EU where SMS (and “international” phone calls?) were extra rate charges on mobile phones. Once every one got accustomed to using whatsapp Meta took it over and now we’re stuck with it.
It’s almost impossible not to sadly, at least if you want to reach everybody in ypur contacts… It was the first popular messaging app here and inertia prevents people from moving to better alternatives now.
The reason is the network effect. I want to use signal or rather even an EU based messaging service, but everybody, including businesses, are on WhatsApp in my country.
In an ideal world, maybe. Hopefully we will see more of that thanks to RCS, since major players like WhatsApp, Message (Facebook) and iMessage will have to open up and be interoperable with other messaging systems.
So far, though, I’m stuck with WhatsApp (and iMessage for just one person!) and Telegram, nobody uses Signal here
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