Tuesday, February 05, 2008

 

Webcam, Video Chat, and Linux

I have been delaying purchasing a webcam for past one and a half years. Reason, I don't have windows. And webcams don't work on Linux. And even if they do, MSN is the only IM service you can use (via kopete) for video chat. Well no longer.

Today I purchased a Logitech QuickCam Communicate STX after installing windows on my home desktop. Surprisingly, it works without any pain on my SuSE 10.3 desktop. All I did was to install the driver rpm by adding the repository http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/drivers:/webcam/openSUSE_10.3 followed by installation of RPMs containing string spca. The installed rpms were, gspcav-kmp-default, gspcav1-kmp-default, and spaca5xx-kmp-default. Reboot after installation of the driver made Linux recognize the camera.

Now to use the webcam for video chat, there were two options: MSN via Kopete or Skype via their recently released beta 2.0 client. I prefer skype.

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