> Is this really a problem with Zoom or one with Wayland and the Linux distros?
I would say this is really a problem with Zoom, mostly due to the lack of attention paid to their web client.
For me, when it comes to video conferencing, the "table stakes" is working duplex audio over bluetooth, and so far only pipewire has solved this, which means Linux only.
After that, two very important features to have are screen sharing and background blur. For screen sharing, both Chrome/Chromium and Firefox have great support for screencast over pipewire, and so do many wayland compositors such as KDE kwin. As such, on a "pure" wayland system with no X11 window [1], screen sharing is also a solved problem.
Background blur is more ... complicated. When Google Meet rolled out https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/10/background-features-in-goo..., it immediately worked with chrome/chromium, on either wayland or X11. However, to this day, I think it still doesn't work with firefox, for whatever reason. Meanwhile, Zoom Linux client only started to support background blur (without green screen) since 5.7.6 released in August 2021, while Zoom web client remains hopeless.
[1] This is very much doable these days, unless you want to run Slack desktop, which is hit-and-miss when running with --ozone-platform=wayland (unlike other electron-based apps such as Signal desktop), and of course the Zoom Linux app, which is just crap, as described in the article. Solution: run Slack and Zoom as Firefox tabs.
"I do not use Wayland because Zoom does not support Pipewire-based recording nor any Wayland screen recording protocols" is a fine although very uninteresting conclusion.
I used Zoom on FreeBSD. By use I mean I was able to be in a meeting, see screen share, share my screen, but I had to dial in for audio and never tried webcam.
Webex lacks a native Linux client, and the browser-based version has limited features and in my experience has had some recurring issues with audio and screensharing. So, purely from a user experience point of view, the shift from Zoom to Webex hasn't been painless.
I really wish Zoom could start using PipeWire for their screen sharing and video as soon as possible. Currently their desktop app gives a very interesting error if trying to share the screen from Wayland/sway. There is no need to only support Gnome on Ubuntu et.al. with PipeWire.
The only way to use Zoom from my point of view is through their web app. And every time I start a meeting from their web interface, they're using every possible dark pattern to force me to install their official app.
I am disappointed with the constant hostility by Wayland proponents to projects which have problems with screencasting (i.e. literally everyone). Even prominent OSS projects like OBS only implemented it recently.
Zoom also does weird OS-detection which seems to fail with Debian-testing, so I can't use screensharing on Wayland. Works fine with Jitsi Meet. They also don't support dual-screen mixed-scaling (4k laptop with 1080p external screen).
Feels like using Skype: worked for a while under Linux, then never got updated and became very unpredictable/clunky.
Only in Chrome, unfortunately, and it's severely limited at that. The most limiting factor is that you can only see one other participant at a time.
Additionally, Zoom's past attempt to prevent you from uninstalling part of their software is extra reason to only use the Chrome version, if any: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20407233
Using Zoom on Linux is a fun way to get everything to crash; and may as well flip a coin to see if I'll get connected / anyone will be able to hear me.
Google Meet, Slack calls, literally everything else works perfectly. With screenshare. On Wayland. I just call in to Zooms now.
Zoom works great on Linux, it's a proper native app and the quality is excellent. Screensharing is notoriously tricky on Wayland and has been a shifting target that is just now starting to settle, I'm sure it'll eventually work.
> Smart background replace with optional green screen support
I find that one curious. Can you elaborate on it? I'm having trouble thinking of a situation that would make it a need. I don't particularly want people having a view into my home, but it's easy enough for me to sit in front of a wall/curtain, or just move personal objects out of view.
The others are more interesting; thanks for the list.
Allow me to add one relevant to certain communities: Audio suitable for musical collaboration. The music teachers, students, and performers I know prefer Zoom because it works better than the alternatives they have tried. I think it's a combination of tolerable latency and the ability to disable audio processing that's designed for speech but distorts live music.
Zoom used to work in Wayland quite some time ago, then it started crashing on meeting join under Wayland, and it was still like that last time I tried it under 5.11.10. Then they finally implemented screen sharing properly in 5.10 or something, then in 5.12 they actively broke it again (popping up a message box saying it won’t work except under GNOME or something like that), so I downgraded to 5.11.10 and it’s fine again. I tried 5.13.0 and it was still broken. I haven’t tried upgrading since; maybe they’ve unbroken it again, one can always hope.
Anyway: Zoom 5.11.10 is working fine for me in all regards so long as I run it under XWayland. My ~/bin/zoom:
I believe a shell alias would also work if that’s how you run things.
Minor suboptimalities in its window management and UI scaling compared to native Wayland under Sway, but nothing big, except for it only handling input and screen updates around once a second if you have any window (except the main one for some reason—but settings, a meeting, chat, participants, they’re all affected) open but not visible (e.g. as an inactive tab—tiled or floating is fine). Oh, and that I get REPLACEMENT CHARACTER from typing astral plane characters with my Compose key, which strongly suggests stupid UTF-16 stuff and I can’t remember if that happens under native Wayland anyway. Or the hidden window problem.
Haven’t tried Zoom on Linux but there the competitor Microsoft Teams is a total disaster Electron app. Beating that one is a really low bar.
Starting with screen sharing since that’s the main topic here. Doesn’t work at all on wayland so no point to even compare further.
Moving on to UI performance, it must be among the worst applications I’ve ever seen since 1993. Even on a super beefy gaming machine. Basic stuff like scrolling in a chat or just switching between chat tabs measures in several seconds rather than milliseconds, and always comes with some weird flicker or jank. Toggling between two open chats, you know the thing you do 1000 times per day, is equally slow and frustrating. I’d rather take no Linux support at all than this vomit.
> Zoom seeks to become the single "remote work tool", challenging Dropbox, et al. directly.
Maybe they should work on the fact I can run Zoom in screen share and just about nothing else. Just entering a call for me takes ~75% of my CPU and I beach ball regularly when screen sharing lightweight text editors doing barely more than scrolling and typing.
Long story short: Zoom does not work well with Wayland.
I use zoom daily on Ubuntu. Its wonderful to have apps like Zoom that actually work and support Linux.
Every so often I fire up Wayland and end up switching back because enough apps just get weird on me... Maybe one day it will work. Until then, I'm good.
I would say this is really a problem with Zoom, mostly due to the lack of attention paid to their web client.
For me, when it comes to video conferencing, the "table stakes" is working duplex audio over bluetooth, and so far only pipewire has solved this, which means Linux only.
After that, two very important features to have are screen sharing and background blur. For screen sharing, both Chrome/Chromium and Firefox have great support for screencast over pipewire, and so do many wayland compositors such as KDE kwin. As such, on a "pure" wayland system with no X11 window [1], screen sharing is also a solved problem.
Background blur is more ... complicated. When Google Meet rolled out https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/10/background-features-in-goo..., it immediately worked with chrome/chromium, on either wayland or X11. However, to this day, I think it still doesn't work with firefox, for whatever reason. Meanwhile, Zoom Linux client only started to support background blur (without green screen) since 5.7.6 released in August 2021, while Zoom web client remains hopeless.
In my previous job, we use Google Meet, and all is well with wayland. In the current one, we use Zoom, and I have to setup https://github.com/fangfufu/Linux-Fake-Background-Webcam as a workaround.
[1] This is very much doable these days, unless you want to run Slack desktop, which is hit-and-miss when running with --ozone-platform=wayland (unlike other electron-based apps such as Signal desktop), and of course the Zoom Linux app, which is just crap, as described in the article. Solution: run Slack and Zoom as Firefox tabs.
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