KPhone 4.2 Review
KPhone is a very simple SIP client and is already one of the most commonly used Linux clients. I have just a few comments about this client.
First, I have to say the more recent releases are much better than the old ones. If you use an older version, you can expect to have sound problems, it won't remember your passwords, and it won't support advanced features such as video.
To obtain the latest version for my distribution (SuSE 9.2), I had to download and install KPhone from source. This may seem daunting, but if you have the right libraries it's a breeze. The one catch is that you will need the Qt3 libraries installed on your system and the Qt3 binaries in your path. This often means typing a command such as "export PATH=${PATH}:/usr/lib/qt3/bin/" in your shell before doing the standard configure, make, make install routine. If this seems too daunting and there isn't a package for your distro elsewhere, you should probably get a linux-savvy friend to help or use a different client as the old versions are not nearly as good.
Once installed, the KPhone client is incredibly easy to configure. You can set up network details simply by entering File -> Identity and filling in the fields with the values given by your SIP provider. The user interface is very clear, and behaves in a logical manner. It only supports one network at a time, but for most applications this is not too important.
KPhone is already a good, simple to use client. In the last few versions major improvements are apparent, and if development continues at this pace we can expect it to become one of the best available within a few years.
Added: Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Reviewer: Timothy Goddard
Score:
Related web link: Official KPhone Website
hits: 9237
Language: eng
