Is Linux Voice over IP Ready? (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Linux Journal takes a look at VoIP on Linux. "Linux generally has two types of sound architecture: the older Open Sound System or OSS, which works with every UNIX-like system, and the newer Advanced Linux Sound Architecture or ALSA, which has better support for Linux, as the name indicates. One application may support OSS and another, ALSA. When you have a choice, we advise you to select the use ALSA option in VoIP programs. Select ALSA or OSS settings for sound and recording levels accordingly in your distribution's volume control panel. We tested four applications, based on popularity. We tested all of them on Fedora Linux."

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Is Linux Voice over IP Ready? (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 31, 2006 18:04 UTC (Fri) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]

Stupid article with lots of misinformation or downrigth falsehoods.

For example, the article claims that it's not the norm to be able to call landlines. Yet, all the applications reviewed are sip-softphones, except Skype. There are literally dozens of services that let you dial landlines from a sip-phone, and skype has their own, so infact *ALL* of the applications "tested" can do this. (it's not an application-issue anyway, much less a Linux-issue, it's a question of a suitable gateway.)

Or another example, it's claimed you should "remember" that VoIP does not have encryption. Really ?

In actual fact, one of the applications tested (skype) has *mandatory* public-key encryption, it's not even possible to turn encryption off if you wanted to. And several of the others are *capable* of using encryption, though in this case setup gets decidedly nontrivial, and frequently requires the callee on the other end (or the POTS-gateway if you're calling POTS) to be running compatible software.