Ring: A replacement for Skype on GNU / Linux

According to its own creators (Savoir - Faire Linux), Ring es A communication platform safe voice and distributed, video And chat that does not require any centralized server and let the power of privacy in the user hands.Ring

Ring es un code software open for communication that allows its users make calls audio or video and send posts in a safe way and free, confidentially. May be associated with a phone service conventional or integrated with any device telephone connected. Being very feasy to use, provide a combination of technologies and innovations open to all kinds of perspectives coming of its users and developers. And being code software open gives the possibility to check that not the software the one control to the user, but vice versa.Free software

Not for nothing is their slogan: With Ring, take control of your communications!

Among its specific benefits we can highlight:

Your confidentiality: No personal information is stored on a central server. Therefore, it is impossible to create files on the users where it is run or installed. Anonymity y el respect for privacy are guaranteed in advance.

Your safety: Eis guaranteed by encryption methods y the use of certificates. Audio, video and text they turn into an encrypted message that only the recipient can decipher.

Your Freedom: Es a code software open under license LPG v3. Each of your users can verify that codes and purposes, and include new ones for improve the software performance. This gives a guarantee transparency and freedom for all!

Ring is a combination of technologies and innovations such as:

  • Multiplatform user interface: GNU / Linux (under Gnome), MS Windows, Mac OS X and Android.
  • Your Libraries are written in QtCore, facilitating portability of clients between different operating systems.
  • Your internal processing methods uses ha D-BUS. Permitating communication between the bookstores LibRingClient y Libring, just for the client GNU / Linux.
  • The core of the application (LibRing) does not interact with users but it is wrapped in each operation of the application itself.

All these elements include external libraries They handle technologies or open protocols and specialized.

Ring components

Ring it's based on four external librariesWhere each of them performs functions specific. they are:

Ring Libraries

OpenDHT: To guarantee Communications Decentralized.

Since gguarantee confidentiality of communications is the purpose Ring essential. And elonged es the reason for it was built a sistem without a server central, based on equal communication equal (peer-to-peer). With a model where critical data not stored in a place unique but which extends among many users.

To find a datum (information) in an architecture peerpeer-to-peer, you need to be able to do easy searches, yeth is the role of la Tables library (free license) based on OpenDHT developed by the developers of the team (Savoir - Faire Linux). Ewritten in C++ he inspired in DHT (Distributed hash table) this meets fully the requirements of Ring. As just use one Basic hash table to find the IP address of an user. Also, said bookstore allows access to others light datas. E.g., OpenDHT can associate a public key with identification ring in order of encrypt the posts.

PJSIP: To allow connections with traditional telephony.

With the purpose of do what Ring be accessible to the elderly possible number of people, it has been chosen PJSIP (Protocol open SIP) for the management of user sessions. This protocol It is very popular in the community of telephony and does not transport data - it is a mediator. Simply the whole world communication channels between the users Compatible. Although originally SIP is based on centralized servers, its developers have modified the protocol to introduce it in OpenDHT and allow the decentralization. Thus giving rise to then single app, the protocol facilitate joining traditional telephony (With a SIP account) and communication Modern (with an account of Ring) in one way Easy to use.

GnuTLS: Stopforce the management of security.

GnuTLS manages the certificates, keys and methods encryption for el audio, video and text. El audio and video circulate through safe channels and follow the strict standards SRTP (Safe transport protocol in real time). This protocol requires than passwords encrypted they negotiate according to method Defie-Hellman. The text communications circulate either in real time through the channel SIP or by OpenDHT when recipient of the message not online. The Security for this Both of you modes is provided by the protocol TLS.

ffmpeg y Libava: To manage the Audio and video.

With the purpose of perform data transfer r-shapedquick and light, Ring uses codecs compression and decompression during to the bank. These codecs are managed by the Libraries ffmpeg y Libava for audio and video.

The codecs used are:

Ring codecs

For download, you can easily click on the download section (download) from the developer and proceed with its installation

Download Ring

Following the easy steps outlined so far for each platform in the tutorial section from the developer:

Ring Tutorials

In short, Ring is a GPL-free communication platform that allows you to make audio or video calls, as well as send text messages securely. Heir to the project sflphone, Ring offers us a decentralized system peer-to-peer, to form a private network in which no data is stored in a central server and with the guarantee of encryption AES 128 in all multimedia communications.

Also Ring is compatible with protocols such as SIP used by many companies that market VOIP, and also with IAX2, allowing compatibility with Asterisk. Each user has an identity (Ring ID) consisting of a 40-character number, which will be used to communicate with our contacts and which we must distribute or obtain previously, so that they may add us or add others.

Integration with the desktop GNU / Linux it is possible to do it by GNOME Contacts (as long as the other party also has RingID), and from the Android mobile it offers several options to share the identity, although with details of ease of use, which will surely be added soon. And Among the advanced functions is the support of a wide variety of audio and video codecs, history, recording the conversation, in addition to the possibility of configuring certificates or encryption.

Completely multi platform and still in state beta, Ring is generating great interest within the eager by a communication platform Video calls within community de Open Source and Free Software.

According to its own developers, Ring «es a communication tool, but it is something more than a tool. It's based on community. Belongs to it and se strengthen through her«.

In my personal experience, I currently after installing Ring according Developer procedure for GNU / Linux using DEBIAN 8

Ring DEBIAN8

That is, I proceeded to download and install the downloaded packages via terminal:

Selection_012

terminal_013

Then, to validate having the last update, perform a update repositories and packages already installed (including the Ring):

terminal_014

terminal_015

Finally, the execution of the Software and a live test of the same to validate its performance, stability, options and operability:

   gnome-ring_018

gnome-ring_021

gnome-ring_020

gnome-ring_019

And finally, the great test a video call and a little chat, with a great Spanish collaborator from the Tenerife Islands, called Tybalt:

Screenshot from 2016-02-08 11:55:17

Screenshot from 2016-02-08 12:01:42

In my personal opinion already It is software mature enough to replace those who use Skype on Linux at home or non-professional or work level. And surely very soon it will be at that stage! And obviously requires a good bandwidth or link quality and camera with mic appreciate good quality video and audio with the listener.


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  1.   Frank Yznardi Davila said

    And for other distros?

    1.    Mauricio Gómez said

      Well it depends what distributions. In Arch you can find it in AUR. If not, I suppose you will have to install it from source code, which is not that difficult either.

    2.    Hugo said

      Go to the official page of the project, there are repositories for many distributions or the main packaging systems.

  2.   dextre said

    I have a moto g with KitKat and it doesn't work, it hangs, I hope it continues to improve. Ring

  3.   HO2Gi said

    Great, I had no idea thanks good post.

  4.   Francisco said

    At the moment it is only for Gnome desktops, right?

  5.   arazal said

    Great analysis of this free alternative to Skype that is fundamentally in the case of an app for videoconferencing, privacy, which Skype being from Microsoft and even more so in the case of Linux, which is outdated the biggest. Without a doubt, everyone who values ​​privacy, when reading your fabulous entry, should at least try it. Great job, Engineer josé Johan Albert

  6.   Jose Albert said

    It works for various Distros, but for now, only DEBIAN, Ubuntu, and Fedora.

    Apparently it is only for gnome, but it should be tested in other environments!

    And it would be good to test it for when it is really stable and to have it.

    1.    Francisco said

      It doesn't work for me in Mint Rosa with KDE 🙂

      1.    Bill said

        It works for me in Mint Rafaela with Xfce, although there is no icon on the start bar tray, but it is there, running in the background.

  7.   Gonzalo Martinez said

    Just one opinion: if you don't interact with the Skype network, it's never going to be a substitute at the business level.

    In my work, all communications are done by skype, and I don't think they stop using something that just works well and is free, and you have support, for something that is to know how it works in the future, if a bug arises, and what Above all, you have no one to complain to if something happens.

    1.    txe said

      Skype offer support? NO. Even in the payment services, if you have a fault, they only refer you to the user forum and look to see if someone else happens what happens to you. And, if we evaluate forums, those of the opensource community have always given better service. The fact that it is open source means that more people can provide solutions if a bug arises. The proprietary application technicians are SO focused on keeping the user in ignorance of the ins and outs of the application that they are capable of loading the concept of 'standard', example: IE. 😛

  8.   Gonzalo Martinez said

    And it also seems to me that the best free software are those that arise as projects by themselves, not those that arise as a "substitute for", with the custom of people you can not compete, except for exceptions, like Firefox that at the time it prevailed over IE, but because IE is falling apart.

    1.    txe said

      If it solves VOIP communications without requiring a centralized server or extends the peer-to-peer protocols, it is a project in itself. In no case can Skype be cataloged in that range.

  9.   Jose Albert said

    The word "Substitute" was put by me, it doesn't mean that they created it as a "Substitute" for Skype.
    However, what you say has weight and logic, but it is not necessarily determined in the possibility of use. If it is compatible with SIP and VoIP Infrastructure, Skype and Ring can interact as video call clients under different free and proprietary platforms linked by the Internet.

    1.    Ekaitz said

      Mmhh… I have also read the comment to which I think you respond. But, within my knowledge at the level of "simple" technical, it seems to me that Skipe uses his own protocol, proprietary. I believe that attempts have been made to make applications "compatible" with the Skipe protocol, but they have not come to fruition, especially since it was acquired for M $. In this regard, I agree with the previous comment about the possible success of a telephony application: the implementation of Skipe, especially in the business field, is so strong that if an application is not compatible with that protocol it will not take root. We have an example with Ekiga, which despite coming "standard" in almost all distros, almost no one knows it at a business level. I say this knowingly because I have a close relative who has told me this way, since all his business contacts use Skipe, in fact forcing others to use it for compatibility. Personally, it doesn't even occur to me to use something that M $ has put his nose into, in fact I have (forgotten) a Skipe identifier that I have barely used, and before the corporate takeover. In fact I only use the Güin2 out of necessity, and using all kinds of programs to screw up the spyware network that they have mounted with them (xp-antispy, DisableWinTracking, etc). Network that, just by seeing how some of these programs act, we realize that the Big Brother thing is not a joke. The W10 is already the last straw, but considering that in UEFI systems the network functions are implemented at the firmware level.

  10.   Jose Luis Ruiz placeholder image said

    Thanks for the info. I have Ubuntu 14.04.
    I will try it and spread it among all my contacts.

  11.   Bill said

    After a couple of days, I have received several times a call from a certain 1001, as I did not have headphones and at that moment I could not speak, although I was supposed to listen through the speakers and I did not hear anything when I picked up the hook. Nor did anyone respond to the text messages I sent to see who it was.
    Is it normal to receive a call from 1001?

  12.   Jose Albert said

    The truth has not happened to me, and I looked for information about something similar on its own page and nothing! I wouldn't know it could be ...

  13.   Alejandro said

    I prefer applications that use communication standards like FIrefox Hello or Jitsi, which also has a version with webrtc. The important thing is to promote a free communications standard so that you can use whatever program you want to communicate with other programs.

    1.    Julius Saldivar said

      If this solution occupies PJSIP then it is occupying SIP as its communication base and that is a communications standard and VP8 for video and OPUS for audio which are the codec promoted by being free.

  14.   diazepam said

    Well now the skype support for linux is screwed up so it's a good time to give it a try
    http://nickforall.nl/skype/