Club Linux Coffs Harbour

A recent phone call to Peru cost us about $1-20 for half an hour, just a little cheaper than using the cheapest phone-card we know about.

We used Linux, Skype, and a FreeTalk PenDrive USB phone. According to my wife Roxy, who was talking to her family, the voice quality was very good, and there was no delay or echo. She said her father could hear some background noise of some sort - may well have been the traffic noise in our shop.

So what was necessary to use Linux like this. Well, as it turns out, very little.

Skype was already installed as I had anticipated using it. I had simply used "Smart" software installer at the time to install Skype, however it came from the "commercial repository" which I have access to as a Mandriva Club member. Skype is available free, directly from Skype and should work with most Linux distributions.

I paid Skype about $16 AUD which gives around 10 hours to popular destinations like Western Europe, Japan, US and so on.

Next, I installed the USB phone. This was a matter of plugging it in a USB socket, setting the microphone volume up from zero on the automatically detected audio device, and selecting /dev/dsp1 in Skype Tool/Options/HeadSets for access to the phone rather than the regular soundcard.

This was all thanks to Gary Wright for lending me the USB phone to check it out. The phones are about $30 from most Internet dealers.

This can be seen at the meeting this Sunday.