@Terminal Velocity :-
There ARE several options nowadays. As
@kc1di says, you've got the Zoom AppImage. There are also the .deb & .rpm packages.....from here:-
Download Zoom apps, plugins, and add-ons for mobile devices, desktop, web browsers, and operating systems. Available for Mac, PC, Android, Chrome, and Firefox.
zoom.us
Ignore what it may say above. They DO offer a Linux client.
If it was me, however......since I don't know how much RAM you have to play with.....I would be inclined to give this a miss. In recent years, they've added the Electron framework into the mix, along with turning what used to be simply a video-chat client into a fully-featured "Workplace" app.
Zoom was always quite a size; the older packages used to run out around the 220 MB mark, and around 500 MB installed. The current packages, however, are now over 700 MB.....and that's just the compressed .deb. Installed, it's probably nearer 1.5 GB.....which for a video-chat/meeting client is
absolutely frickin' ridiculous.
Despite having ample resources here, I don't bother with either of them.
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Zoom has always had a 'webapp' version, which is the online version, directly accessed from the website. For a long time, it was an awful piece of software; camera recognition was sketchy, video reproduction was slow & juddery and the audio quality was absolutely dreadful. However:-
Since the re-hash into the "Zoom Workplace", they've also completely re-built the webapp as well.....and you know what? It's every bit as good as the desktop client now, if not in some respects better. And running it via your browser means that everything's a lot more lightweight, since the average browser is around the 300-350MB mark
installed.
There IS one "quirk". For some reason, the webapp does NOT offer the option for screen-sharing. If you rely on this, you would need to stick with the far bulkier, official desktop client.
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I script a lot, and have long made use of the ability offered by the Chromium-based browsers to turn any website into a webapp.....which you can then "detach" from the browser, and send to any other workspace and use AS a 'desktop client'. I have my Chrome browser set up with several 'custom' launchers to allow me to launch apps individually without opening the browser itself. This also lets me add individual Menu entries for these webapps, and launch them AS desktop clients.
Indeed, the Zoom desktop client and webapp are absolutely identical these days - the desktop 'client' IS essentially the webapp transposed to the desktop; both use the same identical code underneath - and both work just as well. This should take you direct to the webapp:-
pwa
app.zoom.us
Having got it up, you can of course resize the browser window to make it smaller....if you wish. For lower-resource machines, this helps keep the graphics chip cooler since it's not trying to render the full screen all the time.
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Microsoft also have a fully-functional webapp version of the Teams client. You no longer need to install the desktop version, which I believe only comes as a Snap package now.
This is accessible from the Office365 website. Sign-in (you can use a Skype or Teams login, it doesn't matter which), then select it from the sidebar.
https://www.office.com/?auth=1
Hope that perhaps helps.
@wizardfromoz :- Sorry for derailing the thread, Chris. But I felt some of this stuff would benefit Terminal Velocity......and Marbles's threads are never useful to anybody due to his refusal to "share" information. At least this way, the thread has been "useful" to someone (I hope)!
If you feel it should be split off into a separate thread, I'm fine with that.....given that so many individuals/organizations seem to rely on Zoom these days, in the way that they once used to insist on Skype.
Mike.
