Marc’s Mind Nothing to see here. Move along.

Linux Soft Phone Roundup

Twinkle

As you can see by this screenshot, Twinkle immediately fails one of my criteria.  Its default configuration is huge on the screen.  You can make it smaller by disabling the Line Status Display and the Buddy List, but in order to see the control buttons on the top, it is still very very large.

The icons are another issue.  They're old Yahoo Messenger icons.  Not exactly the best or most accurate for a phone.  So they really need to have the text under them just so you know what you're clicking on.  And you do have to click since are no global hot keys for Twinkle.  It does have hot keys available when the application is in the foreground.  It does stay out of the way when you minimize it to the notification area.  A bit too much, though.  When an incoming call comes in it rings phone and the notification area changes to let you know there is a call coming in.  It doesn't pop up any other windows or other notifications.  That means if your speakers are off, as mine are often, you may never know a call is coming in.  Since I use a USB headset for VoIP, I don't need the speakers on to be on the phone, but I do need to know that a call is coming in.

When minimized into the notification area, Twinle does let you click on its icon and have access to most calling functions, answer, reject, hold, etc.  So you don't need to have the window up.  Still, its not quite finished enough.

Twinkle also only seems to support one active profile at a time, which means only a single SIP account can be active.  You do get two sessions to do three way calling, but still only one active account.

Twinkle does have very good NAT support and supports STUN.  It had no problems making or receiving calls sent to it.

Twinkle Conclusions

Twinkle is very stable and very capable.  It has good NAT and is more than capable for day to day use if you have only one SIP account.  It will probably take you some time getting used to its huge and somewhat unpolished interface, however.  For me, it wasn't quite there yet, missing global hot keys, a polished and usable interface, and supporting multiple accounts.

Perhaps Empathy will be better?