PLUG Mug Video chat? This evening Monday 8pm

[Jason]

The video group chat worked very well and it was great being able to see and talk with you quys. :-)

I second that. We'll have to do it again real soon perhaps when Buster and Fox don't have tv shows or movies too close to the meeting time. One hour, especially when all we talked about was COVID-19, was interesting but all too short. We never really got to talk about Linux. But I still enjoyed it, just would like to hang out with you guys longer. I miss seeing you in person.

Perhaps a weekend might be a better time that we could talk longer. If you guys are using online calendars (google has this function), you could share your calendars.

Or ssfc could setup and account with doodle.com to suggest times we could it. You create an account, set the times you can chat, then send the link and each of can sign in and set our times. I don't even think you need an account to do this. And then doodle will suggest times where we have overlap so the creator of it can pick a time. If you prefer, ssfc, I can setup the doodle and send the link.

[fox]

I really enjoyed our Skype meeting as well. It was nice catching up since we haven't seen each other for months. It was also nice seeing your home spaces, at least those where your computers are sitting. It was unfortunate that we didn't get to talk about Linux. I know from the forums that most if not all of us present have been testing new programs and new distros; we could even have done screen demos with the share screen feature of Skype.

I would be up for weekly meetings, but in terms of how long I want them to run, I'm only good for about an hour before I get fidgety; maybe an hour and a half at most. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have longer meetings; I just may leave them early.

In terms of format, maybe we can leave time for each person to talk about something "Linuxy" that they did and/or learned that week.

[Jason]

There is nothing above that I don't agree with, Fox. There's a first time for everything. 😂

I'm going to look for alternatives to Skype since Dougal keeps having trouble with sound issues. You know, Dougal, you could just play hard of hearing and just read the subtitles.  Seriously, though, there are other alternatives. I'm not sure if Telegraph does video but I believe it does audio. It definitely text chat but that may be too boring for you guys. I find it nostalgic as it reminds me of the 90s when IRC started to take off. And one nice feature about Telegraph that it's completely encrypted end-to-end. I think that's something important to Dougal as well as me.

[buster]

Calling in the experts in my family. My granddaughter uses something many times to connect to her university residence floor, and her mom says all individuals show. So she's going to call me this aft and we'll chat.

Did read in my research that Skype doesn't have this capacity, but Hangouts does. Most of us have some kind of Google account. I'll ask if that's what she uses. Not eager to use Zoom because of it's security issues.

[fox]

I've been on a lot of Zoom calls recently, and not a one has been crashed. There are two ways I know of to control this. The first is to send out the code information only to the people you want participating (or those you know that express interest), as Bill did yesterday. The other is to require the moderator accept participants when they connect.

[Jason]

Calling in the experts in my family. My granddaughter uses something many times to connect to her university residence floor, and her mom says all individuals show. So she's going to call me this aft and we'll chat.

Didn't we all show up for you, Buster? I saw everybody in full size once we figured out how to do it properly. I just didn't see myself full-screen and can only hope nobody else did either. ;-) Next time I'll wash my hair and shave.

[Jason]

Fox: I think that Dougal mentioned that you can only do 1-on-1 calls unless you pay a monthly rate. Not sure if everybody has to pay that or just the person starting the call. Discord is a popular chat program but no idea if it does video. It's also cross-platform as are all the ones we've discussed so far.

[buster]

"Didn't we all show up for you, Buster? I saw everybody in full size once we figured out how to do it properly."

When all five of us were on, I saw three people, and I have an idea that is the limit.

[Jason]

"Didn't we all show up for you, Buster? I saw everybody in full size once we figured out how to do it properly."

When all five of us were on, I saw three people, and I have an idea that is the limit.

No, it's not. I was able to see all four of you. But everybody else had trouble seeing me full-size. And at some point, somebody toggled some setting, probably Bill and it worked. Skype can support more than 4 people at once on screen. I think Dougal was in a meeting that had 8 people including himself.

[ssfc72]

Yes, I discovered that all you had to do to, was to drag the person within the tiny video window box, at the top of the screen, down to where the other large video boxes, were, on the main part of the screen, and that person was then also rendered in a large video box.
This was with Skype running under Linux.

[buster]

"Yes, I discovered that all you had to do to, was to drag the person within the tiny video window box, at the top of the screen, down to where the other large video boxes, were, on the main part of the screen, and that person was then also rendered in a large video box."

That's good news! And if it gets too crowded, we can leave out the people who didn't wash their hair.

My granddaughter said they often used Apple stuff such as on their phones. Kids at Carleton tended to use Zoom, tho she didn't. Her close friends and family use Skype - in a very large group they live with the small heads.

[dougal]

there's another platform i  have used in the past but not lately: JITSI MEET...it's open source,free and unlimited time. .has all the usual features...and works on multiple os's.
jitsi.org

[Jason]

"Yes, I discovered that all you had to do to, was to drag the person within the tiny video window box, at the top of the screen, down to where the other large video boxes, were, on the main part of the screen, and that person was then also rendered in a large video box."

That's good news! And if it gets too crowded, we can leave out the people who didn't wash their hair.

I'm hurt. 

[Jason]

there's another platform i  have used in the past but not lately: JITSI MEET...it's open source,free and unlimited time. .has all the usual features...and works on multiple os's.
jitsi.org

I think I just wet my pants because that's really exciting. Maybe we should try that next time.

[dougal]

i could play with it and see how things go on my network, then perhaps do a trial meet with someone to confirm on other machines etc.