Ekiga (formerly called GnomeMeeting) was a

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

and

video conferencing Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio signal, audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Vide ...

application for

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. It was distributed as

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

under the terms of the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later. It was the default VoIP client in

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

until October 2009, when it was replaced by

Empathy Empathy is generally described as the ability to take on another person's perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience. There are more (sometimes conflicting) definitions of empathy that include but are ...

. Ekiga supports both the SIP and H.323 (based on

OPAL Opal is a hydrated amorphous form of silicon dioxide, silica (SiO2·''n''H2O); its water content may range from 3% to 21% by weight, but is usually between 6% and 10%. Due to the amorphous (chemical) physical structure, it is classified as a ...

) protocols and is fully interoperable with any other SIP compliant application and with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

NetMeeting. It supports many high-quality audio and video

codec A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

s. Ekiga was initially written by Damien Sandras in order to graduate from the University of Louvain (UCLouvain), and was further developed and maintained by a community-based team led by Sandras. The logo was designed based on his concept by Andreas Kwiatkowski. Ekiga.net was also a free and private SIP registrar, which enabled its members to originate and terminate (receive) calls from and to each other directly over the Internet. The service was discontinued at the end of 2018. In February 2021, the GNOME Git repository for the project was archived due to inactivity.

Features

Features of Ekiga include:

Integration

Ekiga is integrated with a number of different software packages and protocols such as

LDAP The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed Directory service, directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) networ ...

directories registration and browsing along with support for Novell Evolution so that contacts are shared between both programs and

zeroconf Zero-configuration networking (zeroconf) is a set of technologies that automatically creates a usable computer network based on the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) when computers or network peripherals are interconnected. It does not require manu ...

( Apple Bonjour) support. It auto-detects devices including

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

, ALSA and legacy OSS soundcards, Video4linux and FireWire camera.

User interface

Ekiga supports a Contact list based interface along with Presence support with custom messages. It allows for the monitoring of contacts and viewing call history along with an addressbook, dialpad, and chat window. SIP

URL A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...

s and H.323/callto support is built-in along with full-screen videoconferencing (accelerated using a graphics card).

Technical features

Call forwarding Call forwarding, or call diversion, is a telephony feature of all telephone switching systems which redirects a telephone call to another destination, which may be, for example, a mobile or another telephone number where the desired called party i ...

on busy, no answer, always (SIP and H.323) *

Call transfer A call transfer is a telecommunications mechanism that enables a user to relocate an existing telephone call to another phone or attendant console, using a transfer button or a switchhook flash and dialing the required location. The transferred c ...

(SIP and H.323) * Call hold (SIP and H.323) *

DTMF Dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signaling is a telecommunication signaling system using the voice-frequency band over telephone lines between telephone equipment and other communications devices and switching centers. DTMF was first developed ...

support (SIP and H.323) * Basic instant messaging (SIP) * Text chat (SIP and H.323) * Register with several registrars (SIP) and gatekeepers (H.323) simultaneously * Ability to use an outbound proxy (SIP) or a gateway (H.323) * Message waiting indications (SIP) * Audio and video (SIP and H.323) * STUN support (SIP and H.323) *

support * Audio codec algorithms: iLBC, GSM 06.10, MS-GSM, G.711 A-law, G.711 μ-law, G.726, G.721,

Speex {{More citations needed, date=May 2025 The Speex project is an attempt to create a free software speech codec, unencumbered by patent restrictions. Speex is licensed under the BSD License and is used with the Xiph.org Foundation's Ogg containe ...

, G.722,

CELT The Celts ( , see Names of the Celts#Pronunciation, pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples ( ) were a collection of Indo-European languages, Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient Indo-European people, reached the apoge ...

(also G.723.1, G.728, G.729, GSM 06.10, GSM-AMR, G.722.2 SM‑AMR-WB">AMR-WB.html" ;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WBusing Intel">AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WB<_a>.html" ;"title="AMR-WB.html" ;"title="SM‑ SM‑AMR-WB">AMR-WB.html" ;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WBusing Intel Integrated Performance Primitives">IPP) * Video codec algorithms: H.261">AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WB">AMR-WB.html" ;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WBusing Intel Integrated Performance Primitives">IPP) * Video codec algorithms: H.261, H.263+, H.264, Theora, MPEG-4

History

Ekiga was originally started over Christmas in the year 2000. Originally written by Damien Sandras it grew to being maintained by a team of nine regular contributors by 2011. Sandras wanted to create a Netmeeting clone for Linux as his graduating project at

UCLouvain UCLouvain (or Université catholique de Louvain , French for Catholic University of Louvain, officially in English the University of Louvain) is Belgium's largest French-speaking university and one of the oldest in Europe (originally establishe ...

. Ekiga was referred to as GnomeMeeting until 2004 when a name change was thought necessary by the developers. Concerns were cited that the original name was associated with a discontinued

product called NetMeeting, and not always recognized as

software. It was also proposed that some people assumed they needed to run GNOME to run GnomeMeeting, which was no longer the case. Eventually on January 18, 2006 the name Ekiga was chosen based on an old way of communicating between villages in Cameroon. Around that the time the direction of the software project was changed and it turned into a SIP client. The following shows major version releases: * March 2004 – Version 1.0 under the name GnomeMeeting * March 2006 – Version 2.0 was released under name Ekiga, it was bundled with

2.14 * April 2007 – Version 2.0.9 was the first version to include support for

* September 2008 – Version 3.0.0 * March 2009 – First release of the 3.2.x series. Added support for G.722 audio as well as unified the support for H.263 and H.263. * November 2012 – Ekiga 4.0.0, "The Victory Release", is a major release with many major improvements. * February 2013 – Ekiga 4.0.1, "The Victory Release", this version has many improvements. * 2015 – Ekiga 5.0, new Version with GTK+ 3 and new codecs announced. , Ekiga 5.0 was never released and the software is no longer maintained.

References

External links

* {{GTK Discontinued software VoIP software Free VoIP software Teleconferencing Groupware Social networking services Online chat Free instant messaging clients GNOME Applications Videotelephony 2000 software Videoconferencing software that uses GTK Instant messaging clients that use GTK Voice over IP clients that use GTK Université catholique de Louvain