A brief review of SIP clients

Here I give a brief comparison of a number of SIP clients I have tried. All will run under GNU/Linux; some also run under other operating systems.

Ekiga is a GTK based client, previously known as GnomeMeeting. As well as SIP, it supports H.323, the protocol used by Microsoft NetMeeting. It has an addressbook (which apparently integrates with Evolution), but no contact list (i.e. presence information) as such. The addressbook can also search in LDAP directories. It can login to multiple SIP accounts at once, with one set as the default. As well as voice calls, it also supports video and text, though the text chat is not terrible nice (it does not pop up if someone messages you — you have to open the chat window yourself).

Twinkle is a Qt3 based client. It only supports SIP. Like Ekiga, it can login to multiple accounts at once, but it handles this slightly better in that it allows to select which account to use when making a call, rather than having to change the default like Ekiga. It can look up SIP addresses in the KDE address book, but does not provide any way to edit or add contacts. It does not have a contact list with presence information, though the latest version (1.1, not yet in Debian testing) does have this. It takes up a significant part of the main window with a log of what has happened. This would be better relegated to the status bar and a separate window. The DTMF keypad is in a separate window, which can be opened by a toolbar button. Personally, I would prefer this to be in the main window, though perhaps hidable. It does not appear to support video or text chat; apparently the latest version does support text chat. It seems to have quite sophisticated options for call redirection. It also has two ‘lines’, to allow you to put one call on hold to take or make another. It also apparently allows you to join two calls together, to host a 3-way conference call.