Webcam, Linux, Skype, VMware Server

I wrote before about trying to get Skype video working a webcam under Linux. The best I could do was to get it working with the microphone in the webcam.

These days, I do most of my work in virtual Linux or Windows sessions in VMware Server. Recently, I've been trying out Skype running within virtual sessions under VMware Server.

Running Skype within a SUSE Linux 10 virtual session, the audio is so slow (sounds become long and drawn out) that it is unusable. It's only usable for text chat. On the other hand, within a Windows XP virtual session, both audio and video work as well as they would in a non-virtual setup. The only issue I have had is stability; if I've been talking for half an hour or so, either it causes my Windows to reboot, or it crashes so badly that I have to reboot Windows to kill it (trying to kill the process doesn't work). That's obviously a bit of a nuisance, so I don't do Skype if I'm doing anything important under Windows.

Still, the upside is that there is a way for Linux users to use Skype for audio and video, as long as they can install Windows under VMware (or some other virtualisation software).

The thing that disappoints me is that the Linux Skype client performs so much worse than the Windows one. My host OS is SUSE Linux 10, so it isn't that Linux has issues with the network side of it. That said, the Skype Linux client is definitely usable for audio when it is running on the host OS, not in a virtual session, so it's affected by virtualisation in a way that the Skype Windows client isn't. Perhaps the audio setup in VMware Server sessions is much weaker for Linux than for Windows (that's completely possible, if not quite likely). Still, I really don't know. Curiouser and curiouser.