Posts Tagged ‘video conferences’

How to Install Jitsi Meet on Debian Linux to have your own free software video conferencing secure server

Thursday, April 24th, 2025

 

jitsi-meet-create-new-room-for-video-meetings-linux

 

Jitsi Meet is a free, open-source video conferencing platform that allows you to host secure and scalable video calls both using a Mobile Phone / Tablet / PC or any other electronic device for which jitsi client has available port. Jitsi meet is the best free alternative one can get to Rakuten Viber / Facebook (Meta) / Zoom / Apples' Facetime etc.
What makes Jitsi really worthy is it can make your Video streaming communication give you flexibility to keep your communication a little bit private and harder to be captured than if you use the general Video streaming platforms. 
Jitsi is also a very simple to use and can be used either with a Desktop Client on Windows / Linux and Mac OS or Smart Phone running Android (Samsung / Huawei etc.) or iOS (iPhones) you can configure to use the Jitsi server or directly via a SSL encryption secured web URL address. The only thing i really don't like about Jitsi is it uses Java and its way of work is cryptic just like it is pretty hard to debug or understand exactly how the software works, as when errors came the usual crazzy Java exceptions are filling the jitsi logs.

In below short guide, I'll try provides a simple step-by-step instructions for installing Jitsi Meet on a Debian-based systems, hoping that anyone can benefit from Jitsi by building his own server.

 

jitsi-meet-conference-free-open-source-video-streaming-viber-and-facebook-alternative


What you should have before you start buillding your new Jitsi meet server

Before you begin, ensure that your system meets the following requirements:

  • A fresh installation of Debian 10 (Buster) or newer.

  • A non-root user with sudo privileges.

  • A fully updated system.

  • A domain name pointing to your server's IP address.

  • OpenJDK 11 installed.​

To get a better understanding on how Jitsi meet works it is worthy to take a quick look on Jitsi Architectural diagram:

Jitsi-meet-video-conferencing-software-linux-windows-mac-Architectural-diagram
 

1. Update Your System

Start by updating your system's package list and upgrading existing packages:​

# apt update sudo apt upgrade -y

2. Install Required Dependencies

Install the necessary packages for adding repositories and managing keys:​

# apt install apt-transport-https curl gnupg2 -y

3 Add Jitsi Repository

Add the Jitsi repository key to your system:

# curl https://download.jitsi.org/jitsi-key.gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/jitsi-keyring.gpg

Then, add the Jitsi repository:​

# echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/jitsi-keyring.gpg] https://download.jitsi.org stable/" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jitsi-stable.list > /dev/null

Update your package list to include the Jitsi repository into apt database:​

 # apt update

4. Install Jitsi Meet

Install the Jitsi Meet package:​  

# apt install jitsi-meet -y

During installation, you'll be prompted to:​

  • Enter the hostname: Provide your domain name (e.g., meet.example.com ).

  • Choose SSL certificate: Select "Generate a new self-signed certificate" or "Obtain a Let's Encrypt certificate" if you have a valid domain.​JitsiScaleway

If you opt for Let's Encrypt, ensure that ports 80 and 443 are open on your firewall.​

5. Configure Firewall openings

If you have already a configured firewall to filter out traffic, open the necessary ports to allow traffic to your Jitsi Meet server from your router or entry firewall device as well as on the Linux itself: ​

Allow access to SSH server

# ufw allow 22/tcp


Allow access to HTTP unecrypted to Jitsi meet server

# ufw allow 80/tcp
# ufw allow 443/tcp


Allow access necessery for proper operation of Jitsi VideoBridge (port range 10000 to 20000)
 

# ufw allow 10000:20000/udp
# ufw enable

 

Verify the firewall status is Okay​ 

# ufw status

6. Access Jitsi Meet in a browser

Open a web browser and navigate to your server's domain or IP address:​

https://meet.your-custom-domain-or-IP.com

Hopefully all is okay and You should see the Jitsi Meet interface, where you can start or join a meeting.​

7. Secure Conference Creation (Optional extra)

By default, anyone can create a conference. To restrict this:​

  1. Install and configure Prosody for authentication.
    For those who don't know Prosody is a modern XMPP communication server

  2. Set up secure domains and configure authentication settings.​

For detailed instructions, refer to the Jitsi DevOps Guide. ​
 

Conclusion

Now You should have successfully installed Jitsi Meet on your Debian server.
Installing to Ubuntu and Redhat OSes such as Fedora or Redhat based distros should be not much difrerent from on this guide, except you have to use
the correct RPM repositories.

Now you can further now host secure video conferences using your own infrastructure and have an increased privacy and perhaps be more calm that the CIA or Mussat, MI6 / FSB might be not spying your Video conference talks (except if they don't already do it on an OS level which most likely the case but this doesn't matter. :).

For advanced configurations and features, consult the Jitsi Handbook and the Jitsi DevOps Guide.​Jitsi

That's all folks Enjoy !

Linphone a good working Skype voice over IP alternative

Monday, February 4th, 2013

If you never tried linphone I warmly recommend it.
2 days ago, with a friend of mine we tested a bunch of Linux softwares to find out what is the situation with possible alternatives to Skype to transmit Voice and Video. I've been interested into Skype Alternative programs since about 2 years, but so far I never found good and easy to set up working Linux alternative.

We first tried Ekiga. Though it is said to be a good Linux SKype alternative, my ekiga client running on Debian Linux stable Squeeze ver. 3.2.7.2 failed to connect to SIP account I've created on ekiga.net. I've tried hard to make ekiga connect to account SIP created from ekiga.net but all time I was getting an error on connect:

Ekiga did not manage to configure your network settings automatically. You can still use it, but you need to configure your network settings manually.

Please see http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Enable_port_forwarding_manually for instructions

ekiga cant login to SIP protocol error enable port forwarding manually - ekiga is not ready to use on Linux

After continously trying to follow instructions from above pointed URL and making proper settings on my DL-524 Wireless Router and all time ending up with the annoying error, we decided to finally completely abondoned it and try some other voice over IP clients.
We  tried Jitsi and few others which prooved to be unworking. Finally we give a try to Linphone which seemed to be promising. We tested it On Linux platform, where both of Linux installed OS-es where tested were running Debian Linux (one stable Debian Squeeze and one unstable Debian Blackstar). Linphone even with different versions on different Debian Linux OS-es worked fine Video conferences were crashing but voice over IP via SIP protocol works okay.

Setting up linphone to do speak (voice over IP) conference calls with friends is easy task, you need to have linphone package installed, i.e. run:

apt-get install –yes linphone

Then once installed launch it from terminal or GNOME menus with:

$ linphone-3

You will have to create account on linphone.org's website via Register a Linphone account. Once registered and confirmed the account, linphone sends you an email with credential info, through e-mail like:
 

Dear Linphone user, your account has been activated.

You can now use your linphone account with these parameters :

sip:hipo@sip.linphone.org
hipo
sip.linphone.org
 

Regards,
The Linphone team.

Then in linphone you should configure new created Linphone account via:

Linphone -> Preferences -> Manager SIP Account

LinPhone Working Linux Skype Alternative Settings Screenshot
 

Once account is added, calls via SIP protocol are ready to go. Probabl,y due to incompitability between versions of Debian stable Linux and unstable the user you will add and about to call is showing as offline, however calling between each other works perfect and voice quality is quite good.

good working skype inux alternative to proprietary skype voice video chat program - linphone rulez

Linphone has a version for Windows as well as for AppleIphone mobile phone.

LinPhone for Iphone version dialpad picture

For console geeks, there is also a command line tool interface to linphone linbphonec;

$ linphonec
Warning: Could not start UDP transport on port 5060, maybe this port is already used.
Ready
Warning: video is disabled in linphonec, use -V or -C or -D to enable.
linphonec>
linphonec> help
Commands are:
---------------------------
help Print commands help
call Call a SIP uri
chat Chat with a SIP uri
terminate Terminate the current call
answer Answer a call
autoanswer Show/set auto-answer mode
proxy Manage proxies
soundcard Manage soundcards
webcam Manage webcams
staticpic Manage static pictures when nowebcam
ipv6 Use IPV6
refer Refer the current call to the specified destination.
nat Set nat address
stun Set stun server address
firewall Set firewall policy
call-logs Calls history
friend Manage friends
play play from a wav file
record record to a wav file
quit Exit linphonec
register Register in one line to a proxy
unregister Unregister from default proxy
duration Print duration in seconds of the last call.
status Print various status information
ports Network ports configuration
speak Speak a sentence using espeak TTS engine
codec Audio codec configuration
vcodec Video codec configuration
ec Echo cancellation
mute Mute microphone and suspend voice transmission.
unmute Unmute microphone and resume voice
transmission.
nortp-on-a Set the rtp_no_xmit_on_audio_mute
configuration parameter
---------------------------
Type 'help ' for more details.
linphonec> quit

Another great thing about Linphone is it is licensed under free software license GPL2 – meaning source is publicly accessible – thus anyone with skills and desire to port it to any computer architecture can do it. I did not have time to test it throughfully with newer version of linphone to know if Video calls works fine – whether same program versions are used between both peer sides, nevertheless for anyone willing non M$ sniffed channel to do voice calls between Computers linphone is nice.