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What is the best (and free) Linux softphone?

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Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming

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May 5, 2021, 10:50:05 AM5/5/21
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Subject: What is the best (and free) Linux softphone?

Good day from Singapore,

I already have an Asterisk-based FreePBX VoIP IP PBX SIP server
virtual appliance (VirtualBox).

I do not want to spend so much money on buying physical IP phones.

Recently, I migrated my Fortigate 60D firewall, Huawei E3276s-920 4G
LTE USB modem, FreePBX virtual appliance (on laptop) and 1 unit of
Cisco 7960 IP phone from my home to the community hostel. I cannot
migrate too many hardware to the community hostel even though I have 4
Cisco 7960 IP phones.

As stated earlier, I do not want to spend so much money on buying
physical IP phones.

I am trying to save as much money as possible as I live in extreme
poverty in Singapore. My proposed solution is to install many Linux
virtual machines on my laptop. Each Linux virtual machine will have a
softphone.

So my ultimate question is: What is the best (and free) Linux
softphone available? Do I have many choices?

I am looking forward to your reply.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming, 43 years as of 5th May 2021, is a
TARGETED INDIVIDUAL living in Singapore. He is an IT Consultant with a
System Integrator (SI)/computer firm in Singapore. He is an IT
enthusiast.




-----BEGIN EMAIL SIGNATURE-----

The Gospel for all Targeted Individuals (TIs):

[The New York Times] Microwave Weapons Are Prime Suspect in Ills of
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Link:
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********************************************************************************************

Singaporean Targeted Individual Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming's
Academic Qualifications as at 14 Feb 2019 and refugee seeking attempts
at the United Nations Refugee Agency Bangkok (21 Mar 2017), in Taiwan
(5 Aug 2019) and Australia (25 Dec 2019 to 9 Jan 2020):

[1] https://tdtemcerts.wordpress.com/

[2] https://tdtemcerts.blogspot.sg/

[3] https://www.scribd.com/user/270125049/Teo-En-Ming

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Dan Ritter

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May 5, 2021, 11:30:04 AM5/5/21
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Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming wrote:
> I already have an Asterisk-based FreePBX VoIP IP PBX SIP server
> virtual appliance (VirtualBox).
>
> I am trying to save as much money as possible as I live in extreme
> poverty in Singapore. My proposed solution is to install many Linux
> virtual machines on my laptop. Each Linux virtual machine will have a
> softphone.
>
> So my ultimate question is: What is the best (and free) Linux
> softphone available? Do I have many choices?

I'm not sure why you want each VM to have a softphone.

Debian packages linphone, empathy and twinkle

-dsr-

Emanuel Berg

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May 5, 2021, 3:40:05 PM5/5/21
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Dan Ritter wrote:

> I'm not sure why you want each VM to have a softphone.
>
> Debian packages linphone, empathy and twinkle

Can you then call other people with those or corresponding
software or can you call an actual smartphone using some app
or something?

--
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Weaver

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May 5, 2021, 4:00:04 PM5/5/21
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On 06-05-2021 05:31, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Dan Ritter wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure why you want each VM to have a softphone.
>>
>> Debian packages linphone, empathy and twinkle
>
> Can you then call other people with those or corresponding
> software or can you call an actual smartphone using some app
> or something?

https://jami.net/

In the repositories.
Cheers!

Harry.
--
`The first stage of fascism should more appropriately be called
Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power'.
-- Mussolini

Dan Ritter

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May 5, 2021, 5:20:04 PM5/5/21
to
Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Dan Ritter wrote:
>
> > I'm not sure why you want each VM to have a softphone.
> >
> > Debian packages linphone, empathy and twinkle
>
> Can you then call other people with those or corresponding
> software or can you call an actual smartphone using some app
> or something?

They all speak the SIP protocol. They can:

- call up other SIP clients. There are SIP clients for
smartphones, so the answer to that question is "yes".
- including the Asterisk PBX he already installed
- and each other
- if they talk to a PBX which has a public telephone
interconnection, they can call any phone number that PBX will
allow, and be registered as extensions from that PBX (random
telephones can call them back)

So: free VOIP service to anyone who has a SIP endpoint, and
services which charge money to interconnect with regular phone
systems are available.

Most telephone companies offer SIP to regular phone service and
vice versa for some price.

-dsr-

Dan Ritter

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May 5, 2021, 5:30:04 PM5/5/21
to
Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Dan Ritter wrote:
>
> > They all speak the SIP protocol
>
> OK, what client should I get then?

You could read about those three, and try out any or all of
them.

If you want more advice, you'll need to tell us what you
want to do and what your constraints are.

-dsr-

Emanuel Berg

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May 5, 2021, 5:30:04 PM5/5/21
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Dan Ritter wrote:

> They all speak the SIP protocol

OK, what client should I get then?

Emanuel Berg

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May 5, 2021, 5:40:04 PM5/5/21
to
Dan Ritter wrote:

> You could read about those three, and try out any or all
> of them.
>
> If you want more advice, you'll need to tell us what you
> want to do and what your constraints are.

Check out home page in the URL, lots of screenshots that will
communicate my style pretty fast I guess. I'm in Emacs all the
time, including now with Gnus, in a Linux VT, other than that
I use tmux in the other ttys, and zsh, but I do use X for
mpv, xpd and feh.

No wait, I even have a list:

https://dataswamp.org/~incal/SOFTWARE

So if I could have an interface that would work similarly to
that (except for mpv etc LOL) - no mouse in particular, don't
even have one, should get one and play Quake on the projector.
Ah, sorry, too tired!

What I'd like to do? I have a smartphone,

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 LTE GT-N7105 16GB, Android 4.4.2

Can I call that from Debian? That would be awesome!

Linux ebih 4.19.0-6-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.67-2+deb10u2 (2019-11-11) x86_64 GNU/Linux

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux bullseye/sid
Release: testing
Codename: bullseye

PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux bullseye/sid"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

Dan Ritter

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May 5, 2021, 6:10:04 PM5/5/21
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Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Dan Ritter wrote:
>
> > If you want more advice, you'll need to tell us what you
> > want to do and what your constraints are.
>
> communicate my style pretty fast I guess. I'm in Emacs all the
> time, including now with Gnus, in a Linux VT, other than that
> I use tmux in the other ttys, and zsh, but I do use X for
> mpv, xpd and feh.
>
> No wait, I even have a list:
>
> https://dataswamp.org/~incal/SOFTWARE
>
> So if I could have an interface that would work similarly to
> that (except for mpv etc LOL) - no mouse in particular, don't
> even have one, should get one and play Quake on the projector.
> Ah, sorry, too tired!

OK, you probably want to install linphone-nogtk, which is a
command line version of linphone.


> What I'd like to do? I have a smartphone,
>
> Samsung Galaxy Note 2 LTE GT-N7105 16GB, Android 4.4.2
>
> Can I call that from Debian? That would be awesome!

Sure. Some Android phones have a built-in SIP client, which
tends to be not very good, but you can install linphone,
sipdroid, zoiper, baresip, lumicall. About half of those are
available on F-Droid.

-dsr-

Stefan Monnier

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May 5, 2021, 6:10:04 PM5/5/21
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I think Linphone used to have a CLI interface, so you might want to look
into it. I haven't used it in a long time, so I don't know what is its
current status. I basically gave up on SIP (partly because of very
spotty support for encrypted communications and for async messages like
SMS) and recommend Mumble, Matrix, or Jitsi for discussions over IP
instead; tho none of those support the "call" feature, so they require
some previous arrangement about when the communication will take
place :-( (Matrix trie(s|d) to provide that, but it doesn't really work
for me).


Stefan

Emanuel Berg

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May 5, 2021, 6:20:05 PM5/5/21
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Dan Ritter wrote:

> OK, you probably want to install linphone-nogtk, which is
> a command line version of linphone.
>
>> What I'd like to do? I have a smartphone,
>>
>> Samsung Galaxy Note 2 LTE GT-N7105 16GB, Android 4.4.2
>>
>> Can I call that from Debian? That would be awesome!
>
> Sure. Some Android phones have a built-in SIP client, which
> tends to be not very good, but you can install linphone,
> sipdroid, zoiper, baresip, lumicall. About half of those are
> available on F-Droid.

OK, King, thanks to all of you :)

Richmond

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May 5, 2021, 6:40:04 PM5/5/21
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Emanuel Berg <moase...@zoho.eu> writes:

> Dan Ritter wrote:
>
>> They all speak the SIP protocol
>
> OK, what client should I get then?

I use Zoiper on android. They seem to have a debian package available
but I haven't tried it.

https://www.zoiper.com/en/voip-softphone/download/current

Richard Hector

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May 7, 2021, 9:40:04 PM5/7/21
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On 6/05/21 7:59 am, Weaver wrote:

>
> https://jami.net/

I get puzzled by sites like that that don't seem to say _what_it_is_ ...

Luckily I can get that info from the debian package info :-)

Richard

Weaver

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May 7, 2021, 9:40:04 PM5/7/21
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It's a rebranding of the old `Ring' package.
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