While I&#x27;m unsure about the inability to join calls, I can at least agree that the Linux client is terrible.<p>I finally caved a few months ago, got an account, and started using it (&quot;oh wow it handles &#x27;s&#x2F;woops&#x2F;fixed&#x2F;&#x27;, that&#x27;s awesome&quot;)... until the client began freezing, chewing 100% CPU for as long as I patiently left it running, and not getting itself sorted out. Removing ~&#x2F;.Skype (XDG, anybody?) and re-signing in worked... for about 3 minutes, at which point my profile data re-synced, and the client began choking again.<p>Last I tried the Web-integrated version (Skype icon, top-right of outlook.com et. al., takes a minute to become clickable) I couldn&#x27;t even type &quot;&#x2F;me ...&quot; - the line would send verbatim. At that point I gave up completely.<p>I used to use IRC but I find it too Spartan nowadays, but on the other hand I don&#x27;t want to have to remember what chat tab is in what window, and I can&#x27;t handle the idea of running 15 isolated instances of Webkit for all the separate chat systems out there, so that kills websites and most current &quot;desktop&quot; chat clients.<p>I don&#x27;t use the Internet to communicate much, somewhat ironically. Everything drives me to distraction.<p>Notes:<p>- XDG: TL;DR = says stuff should be in ~&#x2F;.config, ~&#x2F;.cache, etc. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.archlinux.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;XDG_Base_Directory_support" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.archlinux.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;XDG_Base_Directory_supp...</a><p>- I cannot help but admire the reverse-engineering going on at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;EionRobb&#x2F;skype4pidgin&#x2F;tree&#x2F;master&#x2F;skypeweb#skypeweb-plugin-for-pidgin" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;EionRobb&#x2F;skype4pidgin&#x2F;tree&#x2F;master&#x2F;skypewe...</a> to make the outlook&#x2F;skype web integration programmatically consumable. I have no idea how it works but the commits are very recent, which is a big positive sign.