Extremely popular, very easy, very cheap, even free in the basic version. Zoom is one of the most used video conferencing systems of the world, a fast chat service through a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform. Zoom is also used for teleconferencing, telecommuting, distance education, and social relations. And it gained a lot of popularity during this Corona-virus period.
The Zoom client for Linux allows you to start or join Zoom meetings on Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, and many other Linux distributions. It also easy to install and to use, you can also use the Zoom extension for browsers that allows you to start or schedule your Zoom meeting with a single click from your browser or within Google calendar. Zoom unifies cloud video conferencing, simple online meetings, and group messaging into one easy-to-use platform.
Currently, it is not possible to enable E2E encryption for Zoom video meetings. Zoom video meetings use a combination of TCP and UDP. TCP connections are made using TLS and UDP connections are encrypted with AES using a key negotiated over a TLS connection. So, it’s clear that Zoom Meetings aren’t End-to-End Encrypted, despite misleading marketing. For better and open-source conferencing, and with end-to-end encryption on its way to protect your connections, you can use the Jitsi Meetings application.
But, anyway, these days, the most used pieces of software are Google Meet (which doesn’t need installation) and Zoom, so let’s see how to install the latter on our Linux platform.
First, download the app from the download page on the official website: https://zoom.us/download.
Second, if your system provides a simple and quick installation mode, you just have to double click on the icon of the downloaded application. Or right-click and select Open with Software Install (or something similar!).
If not, you need to install it from the terminal:
$ cd Downloads
$ sudo apt install ./zoom_amd64.deb # Ubuntu, Debian, Mint and others
$ sudo dnf install ./zoom_x86_64.rpm # Fedora
$ sudo zypper install ./zoom_openSUSE_x86_64.rpm # openSUSE
Open your Application Launcher and click on the Zoom icon. And that’s done!
References and resources
- Zoom Official Website – https://zoom.us/
- Zoom Clients Download Page – https://zoom.us/download
- Jitsi Meeting | A Zoom Opensource Alternative – https://jitsi.org/