Long years ago, we've talked about a Skype alternative called Tox which was still in its early developmental stages. Tox was supposed to become the anti-thesis of Skype by being a fully open-source video and voice chat client that placed user privacy and security at its center. Well, guess what, there are now fully active and well-maintained chat clients that are built on top of Tox protocol. qTox is one of them.

qtox skype replacement for linux

qTox: Free and Open Source Skype Replacement for Linux
Tox is a peer-to-peer instant-messaging and video-calling protocol that offers end-to-end encryption. There are two popular clients built on top of Tox, namely uTox and qTox. Here we will discuss about qTox, the more feature-rich and configurable of the two.

qtox skype alternative ubuntu

The work flow of qTox video chat client is pretty straight forward. You just need to share you unique Tox ID (the one you get after you sign up) with the person you want to chat. Friend requests pop-up in your screen once it is sent and you can either accept or reject it. qTox is fully featured with support for video/voice chat (picture-in-picture mode for video calls), sending/receiving files, screen-sharing etc. By default, video chat is disabled for security reasons and you need to enable it first in qTox-Settings when you want to video chat.

qtox skype alternative

Installing qTox in Ubuntu 16.10:
Just copy-paste the following commands into Terminal one by one (keyboard shortcut: CTRL+ALT+T).

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/antonbatenev:/tox/xUbuntu_16.10/ /' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/qtox.list"
wget -nv http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:antonbatenev:tox/xUbuntu_16.10/Release.key -O Release.key
sudo apt-key add - < Release.key
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install qtox

The first line adds the repository while the second and third line download the key for authentication. Then you update the repositories and install the app, which is 'qtox' here.

Installing qTox in Ubuntu 16.04:
Installing qTox in Ubuntu 16.04.2 "Xenial Xerus", being the latest LTS release. Same as before, copy-paste the following lines to your Terminal.

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/antonbatenev:/tox/xUbuntu_16.04/ /' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/qtox.list"
wget -nv http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:antonbatenev:tox/xUbuntu_16.04/Release.key -O Release.key
sudo apt-key add - < Release.key
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install qtox

Done! After installing you can quick-launch the app from Ubuntu launcher, just search for 'qTox'. I have installed the app in Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 16.10 and Windows 10. The video and voice chat worked across platforms. Tried screen-sharing too with Windows 10, but the experience could have been a lot smoother. But as I understand, qTox is still in active development. So you can expect improvements to happen over time.

qTox is cross-platform and is available on a wide range of OSes. For downloading qTox for your favourite Linux OS (Arch, CentOS, Fedora, openSUSE supported), follow this link. For Windows and OSX installers, see here. qTox is still very much on the bleeding-edge side of things and we strongly recommend adequate testing before using it on production machines. Thank you for reading. Related: Meet the new Skype for Linux Beta.

After long years of inactivity, a new Skype for Linux was released about an year ago. Though the version of Skype released for Linux was in its early alpha and had many critical features missing, it was reassuring to know that Microsoft has not abandoned Skype for Linux platform entirely after acquiring it. Microsoft recently released the beta version of Skype for Linux platform giving a major fillip to many missing features.

new skype for linux ubuntu

New Skype for Linux Beta: What works, what doesn't?

So, the new Skype for Linux beta is here. It is not a finished product yet and has its limitations. But unlike the earlier alpha release, the Skype beta comes loaded with all the basic functionalities one expects from a video/voice chat software. It supports one to one video calls from Linux to other platforms and vice versa. Skype credits is also enabled by which you can make calls to mobiles and landlines.  

Screen sharing though is still tricky. Apparently, as a Linux user, you can view shared screens from other Skype desktop clients (Windows and Mac), but you cannot share your screen with other platforms, which is a major letdown for business users. Deeper integration with Ubuntu's Unity launcher is another plus. For example, Skype beta now shows the number of unread conversations on the Unity launcher.