Zoom Communications Services

[Skaperen]

has anyone here tried Zoom on Ubuntu, yet? does it work for you? which browser(s) or client(s) work?

[timgood]

Yes, it works fine for me using Chrome and the standalone Zoom .deb which you can download from Zoom. Very easy to use and the quality is OK!

[SeijiSensei]

I'm using the standalone client for Linux as well. As I recall, I had to install a couple of other packages manually.

After downloadin the .deb, I ran

$ sudo dpkg -i zoom_amd64.deb 
[sudo] password for xxx: 
Selecting previously unselected package zoom.
(Reading database ... 250645 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack zoom_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking zoom (3.5.374815.0324) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of zoom:
 zoom depends on libgl1-mesa-glx; however:
  Package libgl1-mesa-glx is not installed.
 zoom depends on libxcb-xtest0; however:
  Package libxcb-xtest0 is not installed.
 zoom depends on ibus; however:
  Package ibus is not installed.

After running

sudo apt intall ibus libgl1-mesa-glx libxcb-xtest0

the client runs flawlessly.

I'm using Kubuntu. Those packages might be included in other flavors of Ubuntu.

[Skaperen]

is this something PPA would be good for?

[SeijiSensei]

I don't think that's possible. The Zoom client is a proprietary binary. I doubt the source code is publicly available.

They have a GitHub repository, https://github.com/zoom, but I don't see the client source, and there's nothing there for Linux per se.

[Skaperen]

i'm just thinking that their binary .deb could be put in a private repository so it can be upgraded by them when needed.

also, since it is binary and proprietary, i'm thinking out how to run it in isolation. a VM is overkill. but a container might do (lxc is probably sufficient). i don't want to let it see my system (users, files, /etc). i think i can be safe enough running Xorg outside of the container and run everything else inside (with essential net access that i can tcpdump if i need to).

[EuclideanCoffee]

Easier way, Skaperen would be simply to use reprepro.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianRepository/Setup#reprepro

[DuckHook]

From a security perspective: https://protonmail.com/blog/zoom-privacy-issues/

In our understandable rush to offset social distancing with virtual bonding, these concerns sometimes get overlooked.

[Tadaen_Sylvermane]

My wife and I used it sunday for a religious service. Worked great even on our 11mbit connection. Actually had 2 connections, 1 being at my parents place across the yard. We had 70+ participants without trouble. We will be doing this twice a week for the foreseeable future. The .deb even at 14.04 worked just fine on Xenial.

Just wanted to add that we weren't able to use the test audio option. It worked anyway off of Hdmi on the living room tv. The option was greyed out.

*EDIT* mean to say bionic, not xenial. I'm assuming it works fine there as well.

[grahammechanical]

My Christian community has just started using Zoom for their meetings. I installed the Zoom client for Ubuntu. Yes it is for 14.04 but it works fine on Ubuntu 18.04. I have one gripe with Zoom (apart from the privacy concerns, that is).

The application does not come with a help document. I could not find any information on how to indicate that I wished to participate in the conference. And there is a lot of audience participation in our Christian meetings. I have now found out how to do it but at the time I did not fancy clicking everything in sight during the actual meeting.

Regards