Then my account was "accidentally" suspended and required proof of being an adult. In order to prove I'm an adult, I had to pay $0.50. So I didn't. I was using that as an excuse to finally change to something better.
...after a couple weeks and a lot of complaining, my account was un-suspended. Welp, so much for that excuse.
Now I'm getting forced to update to Skype 5. Or, at least, that's what the email said. It said Skype 4.3 would be disabled. Well it's not (yet) disabled. And, I'll keep using 4.3 until it is.
I can tell you right now that Skype 4.3 was better than Skype 5 in pretty much every way imaginable.
* It was more configurable.
-> All notification customizations? Simplified to "do you get notifications?" and "do you want sound with your notifications?"
-> It didn't bother me with system notifications for every message (really, I just want sound, not a system notification popup)
-> The new Skype sound is extremely annoying, so much that I would rather miss being notified of a message instead of being constantly bothered by the sound that I cannot change
-> Show me as 'away' when I am inactive for X amount of minutes feature is gone
-> Where's the Skype API? Is that gone too?
* It was faster.
-> Skype 5 frequently (once or twice per day) hangs for minutes at a time. I just `killall -9 skypeforlinux` and restart it.
* It crashed less often.
-> okay it doesn't actually crash often, but I consider the hang (see above) as a crash
* It actually had a window that showed file transfers and their status (although it showed them twice), instead of showing it only inline in the chat.
* You could actually search your the chat history
-> Skype 5 doesn't let you search your chat at all, let alone your chat history
* The UI didn't follow the bloated shitware that the Web seems to be moving toward
-> The list of users in chat rooms is actually usable
->-> try scrolling a chat room user list with 120 people in it? trololol no I'm serious here I can't find anyone
-> Right-click menu appeared to use the system menu widgets instead of yet another "I'm going to be different than everything else" widget that takes up half of the friggen window for no reason
-> Window scrolling (someone typed a message) didn't prevent the contextual menu from working
-> Yeah, okay, it couldn't load images that people shared. It also couldn't load those full-screen animated movies that people shared. I consider both of those to be benefits though.
At this point, Slack and Discord both seem like better communication options.
...that's just going from Skype 4.3 to Skype 5. I'd hate to see what's going on with Skype 8. Honestly, at this point, I'm very much glad that Microsoft ignores the Linux side of things.
Then my account was "accidentally" suspended and required proof of being an adult. In order to prove I'm an adult, I had to pay $0.50. So I didn't. I was using that as an excuse to finally change to something better.
...after a couple weeks and a lot of complaining, my account was un-suspended. Welp, so much for that excuse.
Now I'm getting forced to update to Skype 5. Or, at least, that's what the email said. It said Skype 4.3 would be disabled. Well it's not (yet) disabled. And, I'll keep using 4.3 until it is.
I can tell you right now that Skype 4.3 was better than Skype 5 in pretty much every way imaginable.
* It was more configurable. -> All notification customizations? Simplified to "do you get notifications?" and "do you want sound with your notifications?" -> It didn't bother me with system notifications for every message (really, I just want sound, not a system notification popup) -> The new Skype sound is extremely annoying, so much that I would rather miss being notified of a message instead of being constantly bothered by the sound that I cannot change -> Show me as 'away' when I am inactive for X amount of minutes feature is gone -> Where's the Skype API? Is that gone too?
* It was faster. -> Skype 5 frequently (once or twice per day) hangs for minutes at a time. I just `killall -9 skypeforlinux` and restart it.
* It crashed less often. -> okay it doesn't actually crash often, but I consider the hang (see above) as a crash
* It actually had a window that showed file transfers and their status (although it showed them twice), instead of showing it only inline in the chat.
* You could actually search your the chat history -> Skype 5 doesn't let you search your chat at all, let alone your chat history
* The UI didn't follow the bloated shitware that the Web seems to be moving toward -> The list of users in chat rooms is actually usable ->-> try scrolling a chat room user list with 120 people in it? trololol no I'm serious here I can't find anyone
-> Right-click menu appeared to use the system menu widgets instead of yet another "I'm going to be different than everything else" widget that takes up half of the friggen window for no reason
-> Window scrolling (someone typed a message) didn't prevent the contextual menu from working
-> Yeah, okay, it couldn't load images that people shared. It also couldn't load those full-screen animated movies that people shared. I consider both of those to be benefits though.
At this point, Slack and Discord both seem like better communication options.
...that's just going from Skype 4.3 to Skype 5. I'd hate to see what's going on with Skype 8. Honestly, at this point, I'm very much glad that Microsoft ignores the Linux side of things.