Kubuntu 0 Windows 1 (Skype stops play)

After the DNS problem was laid to rest, kubuntu really did work like it promised to. Installing new programs was a breeze! The package maintainers have done a great job of ensuring newly added programs are integrated into the rest of the desktop. Some stuff that I miss from time to time in Slackware, such as a file window popping up when I plug in my USB drive, and being able to browse the shared folders on other machines on the network straight out of the box, was very exciting. I showed my wife. She said "where's skype?". I hadn't yet installed it. I looked at our so-cheap-you-couldn't-turn-it-down webcam and had a bad feeling. It's unbranded. One person had enquired in a web forum, just once, about it and got a very snotty answer from the package maintainer. Without naming names, I suspect the maintainer was not the originator of the software. It was a reasonable request from the webcam owner, and I reckon if he'd asked the bloke who writes the software for webcams like his, he'd have got a very different answer.

Anyway. No Linux support for that webcam. "Write some!" I hear you all advise. Well, I started. And then I stopped. The code looked straightforward enough to modify. After I'd made a couple of changes, I could see that Linux was 'recognising' the webcam, and it looked a small matter of ... oh wait. I'd have to plug the webcam into a PC running Windows and snoop the USB messages. And if that worked, then I could use some open source software to video chat with anybody who... uses... open... source... video... chat... software. Starting to get the picture? Skype for Linux doesn't do video! And there's little promise of it from their website. My wife was very generous. She discussed it with me quite rationally for ooh, minutes. It must have been clear to her how clear it was to me exactly how long she was going to tolerate the excursion into Linux. Ah. There we are: "To begin, click your username". The end of the adventure. Now where are all those shiny CDs of proprietary drivers?