[BLU/Officers] Online meetings

Tue Mar 24 17:27:15 EDT 2020

Let's do the jitsi test tomorrow evening. Who's available to participate?

Wednesday, March 25, 2020 at 7:00 pm.

You can join the meeting directly at the url: https://meet.jit.si/blu.org

On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 4:52 PM John Abreau <abreauj at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've added Federico to the conversation.
>
> I did some further testing, and found that desktop sharing and windows
> sharing seem to work well on both hangouts-meet meet and jitsi.
>
> I looked into recording the meetings, and I found that jitsi does it out
> of the box for free, whereas hangouts only provides it for Enterprise
> accounts, which I assume would be prohibitively expensive for us. Jitsi
> records the meetings to dropbox, and when I downloaded and played my test
> recording afterwards, the video and audio quality were excellent.
>
> I performed both tests from within google chrome, so both are
> platform-agnostic. Members won't have to install a dedicated client to
> attend. Unless they attend by a handheld device, of course, but I saw that
> jitsi has both iOS and Android client apps, and I assume hangout-meet does
> as well. I tested the jitsi android app, before I tried it in the browser,
> and it worked well.
>
> If we find that all else is equal, I'm leaning toward jitsi at this point,
> but I'd still like to run some tests with other participants using both
> platforms, initially with just a few of us and later with a larger number
> of participants.
>
> Setting up our own jitsi server is an option I'd like to investigate
> later, but for now we can stick with the existing free server. The
> roll-your-own server is only actively supported on Ubuntu, and apparently
> installing it on CentOS is a major hassle, so if we decide to set up our
> own, I'll want to build the new server with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS instead of
> CentOS 8, and 20.04 won't be released until next month.
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 3:20 PM John Abreau <abreauj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I also have a server at home that's meant for our site. I had held off on
>> building it until CentOS 8 was released, then forgot to get back to it, but
>> I'll add that to my todo list and start working on it this week.
>>
>> I installed jitsi earlier today, just after replying to Bill. It looks
>> okay in the browser and on my android phone, as far as I can tell without
>> other participants, although in firefox it complained about the browser and
>> recommended google chrome instead. The jitsi client application appears to
>> be a text-based chat client; I've been unable to find any video
>> capabilities in it.
>>
>> I lust connected to Hangout Meet with google chrome using my gapps login.
>> Again, like jitsi, I need some other participants in order to try it out
>> properly.
>>
>> The video meeting I have open now is at the following link:
>>
>> https://meet.google.com/oda-sngs-krp
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 3:01 PM Jerry Feldman <gaf.linux at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I agree that G-Hangout-Meet and Jtsi are worth a look. We have 2 issues:
>>> 1. April 15th. We just have to coordinate with Federico.
>>> 2. Officers. (a more standard collaboration platform, like G-Hangout-Meet
>>> 3. I have a server sitting at home that I will bring to the BLU hosting
>>> center at some time.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 2:50 PM Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 2:24 PM John Abreau <abreauj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If Zoom is unacceptable, then I imagine skype, hangouts, and the other
>>>>> options mentioned previously will likely also have issues. It sounds like
>>>>> you think it would be bad to even test Zoom.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> While Skype and Hangout-Meet are owned by MS and Alpha/GOOG,
>>>> respectively somewhat and highly suspect on privacy grounds, i am not
>>>> *aware* of any *specific* privacy issues with them.
>>>> (I haven't noticed targeted ads as a result of keywords in Hangout...
>>>> yet ... as i do with G-mail, G-chat and FB DM and post/reply.
>>>> Creepy but better than all the ED cures they used to offer when my only
>>>> known demographic was Male.
>>>> OTOH you'd think they'd know i eventually bought a mattress after
>>>> comparison shopping so maybe i don't need another immediately and they can
>>>> back off that keyword?)
>>>>
>>>> I looked through those links, and a couple of them recommend Jitsi as
>>>>> an alternative. Apparently we could run our own blu.org jitsi server
>>>>> on our hardware.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> That would seem to be the most FLOSS-dogfood option based on the
>>>> current buzz.
>>>> I can't personally recommend as I haven't tried Jitsi.
>>>> Offhand IDK running our own might be required - is there a free server
>>>> and is it over-subscribed in this crisis?
>>>>
>>>> Shall we test jjitsi instead, or do you have some other platform in
>>>>> mind that we should try? I'd really like to try out something suitable this
>>>>> week for holding an officers meeting with at least 3 participants.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'm comfortable with G-Hangout-*Meet* and that is compatible with our
>>>> existing YouTub archive, bonus.
>>>> Jitsi probably worth a look.
>>>>
>>>> // Bill
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> --
>>> Jerry Feldman <gaf.linux at gmail.com>
>>> Boston Linux and Unix
>>> PGP key id: 6F6BB6E7
>>> Key fingerprint: 0EDC 2FF5 53A6 8EED 84D1  3050 5715 B88D 6F6B B6E7
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
>> Email: abreauj at gmail.com / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID
>> 0x920063C6
>> PGP-Key-Fingerprint A5AD 6BE1 FEFE 8E4F 5C23  C2D0 E885 E17C 9200 63C6
>>
>>
>
> --
> John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
> Email: abreauj at gmail.com / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID
> 0x920063C6
> PGP-Key-Fingerprint A5AD 6BE1 FEFE 8E4F 5C23  C2D0 E885 E17C 9200 63C6
>
>

-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
Email: abreauj at gmail.com / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0x920063C6
PGP-Key-Fingerprint A5AD 6BE1 FEFE 8E4F 5C23  C2D0 E885 E17C 9200 63C6
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.blu.org/pipermail/officers/attachments/20200324/7d63a441/attachment.html>