I had Windows XP in my laptop and i often use IM software to do text/video/audio chats with friends and family for years. Reading slashdot got me interested in linux so I replaced my windows with Ubuntu. The first thing I want to do is use my IM as that's the most frequently used software for me. Initially I thought it'll be a trivial thing to get the same functionality in linux as IMing is a very common task for many. My first step was with Pidgin. But to my disappointment, it only does text.. no video/audio. I discovered that there is gaim-vv, but then on its website, i see this message in its website:
"As of 2005-11-10 16:46, this project is no longer under active development."
What the heck. I didn't give up so easily. After a few rounds of googling, I realised that I can use AMSN to at least get the video to work. So I got video and text to work. Now I have no idea but AMSN didn't do audio for me. Okay another round in google. Try Kopete.. nops it only does video for 2 seconds and crashes for no reason. Finally I found Skype for linux. It did audio finally but the video part of skype is not implemented for linux. Oh why!

At least if I use AMSN with Skype, I can do text and video with AMSN and audio with skype. But my friends need to be logged in both and need to have accounts with both. No luck for friends who are only using Yahoo (yahoo's linux client sucks big time).

I had a brief misadventure trying to use windows skype with Wine. What a pain. The thing keep crashing randomly with all sorts of weird errors that is beyond me.

In the end, after a full day's round of mishaps and pain, I wondered why such a trivial thing in Windows got to be so difficult in linux? What did the end user did to deserve all this?

Day two, and I realised that my AMSN refuse to recognize my web camera for no apparent reason. Now it just does not work anymore.. no clue why. It is still plugged in, did a few restarts of the OS. No luck. I do not have the energy or time anymore to run after another solution. I just want it to work period. How I miss my windows!