

There are a few downsides to Gnomemeeting currently: It is very difficult to find online chatters willing to chat with you. Quite a surprise that the first Greek person I saw online via Gnomemeeting happened to be a female Slackware user! This is how I in fact met my friend Stella from Athens, Greece. It brings a modern sense to the “Linux/Unix user group” franchise. Gnomemeeting is great to get in touch with other Unix users. Additionally, it can directly video phone via IP number (using a telephone-like dialpad) or function as a real phone via third party hardware. Gnomemeeting has the ability to connect to NetMeeting servers but it requires a membership for these servers. bad firewall setup preventing connection), there is always the fail safe traditional text chat. You can engage on a video chat and if something goes wrong in the connection (e.g.

The default Gnomemeeting directory is and searching for all users usually reveals between 90 and 180 visible members online, depending on the time of the day (some users choose to be hidden).

To start chatting you need to connect to a lookup directory (the “server”). On the preference panel you can also set more options, like additional personal information, audio/video settings, etc. Gnomemeeting requires some ports to be open on your firewall to properly work. For me to get up and running I had to go to the preference panel and check the “IP Translation” option as I am behind a firewall. The Gnomemeeting window consists of a vertical toolbar, the video window and its controls, a chat view and a separate window which shows the server you are currently connected and its users. The first time you run Gnomemeeting it runs a wizard which sets up your microphone, video and personal information. My $35 USB Creative Webcam Pro works fine with any Unix I have tried it with (BSD, Mandrake, JDS, RHL/Fedora, Slackware etc, but not on Mac OS X) and Gnomemeeting loads it successfully too. I have used iSight/iChat and MSN Messenger with a web camera for quite a while now and so here’s how Gnomeemeeting compares to these other options. Gnome 2.4 comes standard with GnomeMeeting 0.98.5, a Free video-conferencing application.
