Raspberry Pi is a mini version of a desktop computer. There are so many applications, web servers, and game emulators that one can run on Raspberry Pi. But unfortunately, Skype is one of those applications that can’t be directly run-on Raspberry Pi. There is one ExaGear Desktop that allows installation of Skype on Raspberry but obviously, that requires an extra effort of installation, including installing few dependencies as well. To avoid that much hassle of the extra installation process in this article, we will show you the 10 best alternatives to Skype that are free to use on your Raspberry Pi system.
10 Free Skype Alternatives for Raspberry Pi
Most people use Skype to connect to people worldwide, however, due to its complex installation on Raspberry Pi, you can install other 10 free skype alternatives, which are as follows:
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- Zoom
- Slack
- Discord
- Jami
- Jitsi
- qTox
- Talky
- Webex
- Retroshare
- Signal
For details on each of these alternatives keep reading!
1: Zoom
Nowadays, zoom is one of the most common online meeting platforms used by people of all age groups. Within a few years, it has become so popular that it is widely used all around the world for all kinds of professional meetings, online classes, personal meetings, webinars, marketing events, conferences, and much more.
Zoom provides users with good video and audio quality features, allowing users to enjoy video calling with their friends and family members.
To download Zoom for free Click Here.
For an easy installation, you can follow here.
2: Slack
Slack is an application designed for both personal and professional usage. It allows its users to stay organized. It provides multiple features for its users to stay connected whether in teams, channels, or groups. It also allows its user to share audio, videos, or different file documents. It also provides a work streamlining feature by connecting with other Apps too.
Also, in terms of security, Slack is highly secure. Your privacy and data remain secure with Slack. Nowadays in many business/professional settings slack is replacing emails to avoid spam messages.
To install it on your Raspberry Pi system, you should download the .exe file first and then perform the installation using Wine. You can get help from here to learn how you can install Windows applications using Wine.
You can also install slack by using the below command:
3: Discord
Discord is one of the best replacements for Skype as it makes it easy for its users to do chatting, video and audio calling with other people. It is an open-source platform that was initially designed as a dedication to Gameplayers who had to connect to their opponents and audience during game streaming.
Discord allows you to connect with your school clubs, Gaming groups, and artistic communities all around the world. Basically, Discord claims that they are making hanging out easy for everyone and you can also find online communities and connect with them too. Discord has most of its popularity among youth around the globe.
For an easy installation, you can follow here.
4: Jami
Jami is also an open-source communication platform that can be used as an alternative to Skype on your Raspberry Pi system. Jami provides safe and fast communication between its users. One of the greatest features of Jami is that it allows users on the same network to communicate even without WiFi.
Jami is a great platform for users with high privacy concerns as it keeps the conversation safe between peers and doesn’t require much personal information while creating an account. Also, Jami has no restrictions on the number of accounts, file sizes, speed, bandwidth, and storage. So, video conferencing through Jami could be a great experience for its users.
5: Jitsi
Jitsi is an open-source best video conferencing tool that allows developers to customize the tool according to their requirements. Other than creating secure audio/video calls, Jitsi also provides recording, sharing, and simulcasting functions.
Jitsi allows its users to create secure rooms by using passwords. It also provides the statistics of participants’ talk time. Jitsi is totally free of cost yet it provides features like good audio, video, screen sharing, and including multiple people in a meeting, which are provided by high-cost software/tools.
6: qTox
qTox is a totally free application that allows you to connect with your friends, family, colleagues, and anyone around the world. For qTox privacy really matters and that is their top priority. The qTox interface is easy to learn and use, it is not very complex like a few other applications.
Some of the notable features of qTox include an Ad-free interface, 30+ languages support, file transfer and image preview support, video chats, video conferencing, and much more. This all comes without compromising security and privacy.
Download qTox by clicking Here.
7: Talky
Talky is a unique tool from the rest of the software in this list because to use it on your system, you don’t need to download any software. Talky is a web-based communication tool. Talky allows 15 participants to join in the conversation. Talky provides active screen-sharing features which make collaborations easy for both work and family meetings.
It is very simple to use Talky as you just go to any browser and open the talky website, create the room and share the link with your required audience. That’s it for the process and you all can enjoy the conversation together.
8: Webex
Webex is also one of the very good video conferencing and cloud calling apps that is available for Raspberry Pi OS. The basic free version of Webex provides up to 40 minutes of video meetings with participant values of up to 100. It also provides the feature of creating breakout rooms like the paid version of zoom but in Webex, it is free.
9: Retroshare
Retroshare is a file-sharing and communication application. Other than providing a good voice and video call facility, it provides Forum where you can read/write and share posts and pics.
Retroshare has an ad-free interface, allowing users to use this application without worrying about ads appearing on their screens. It also allows its users to create a friends-to-friends network known as a decentralized topology.
10: Signal
The signal is an absolutely amazing communication tool that allows its users to communicate through messages, voice, and video calls with great privacy features. A signal is so secure that even a signal authority is not allowed to invade your private chat. It is almost like WhatsApp and has a pretty friendly user interface. Apart from that, it also provides a feature to select message/text disappearing intervals for a more secure and safe chatting experience.
That’s it for this guide!
Conclusion
The installation of skype is pretty complex on the Raspberry Pi system. However, there are so many alternatives to skype for video and voice calling features like Discord, Retroshare, Zoom, Jami, Jitsi, qTox, and many more. The most important thing about each of these platforms is that they are free of cost, easy to use, and are lightweight. Some of these communication tools provide better features than Skype, allowing Raspberry Pi users to switch to any of these tools easily.
