WhatsApp is shit at video calls (sync issues etc. described above), and doesn't work properly on a desktop computer.
I haven't had problems (maybe I've ignored them) using the web based interface for WhatsApp on my desktop. What issues are you having ?
You don't seem to be able to make video (or presumably audio) calls from the desktop application.
Unfortunately, we're using this with Natalya's Mum, who is a bogon source, and dyslexic. FaceTime would presumably solve the problem reasonably well, but would require Fruity hardware that we don't have. Getting her to install something that works acceptibly well for lip-reading (eg. Zoom or Signal) is a work in progress (I eventually talked her through installing Zoom on her MacBook, but was defeated from actually getting her to join a meeting by the MacBook being unable to receive email).
<mode=egg sucking, user=$grandmother> I think the W10 desktop app now allows video calling. https://www.alphr.com/whatsapp-video-call-windows/. There's an unofficial *nix app too that claims video calling is possible too. </mode>
Zoom4linux (I think that's what it's called although it is only listed in the applications on my Ubuntu as Zoom) works very well where I have only had audio config problems trying to use Messenger both on Ubuntu and on W10 (although the W10 box is a particularly rubbishy HP laptop)
Yeah, the only reason we weren't using Zoom (which we have available on a multitude of Windows and Linux machines here) was because of PEBKAC issues at the remote end. Mrs barakta's-mum is horribly dyslexic and has a habit of instinctively clicking on UI elements simply because she's familiar with them, without regard for what they might actually do. This makes talking her through sorting out computer problems Type 2 Fun.
Suffice to say, she'd successfully installed Zoom on her iPad, but IOS wasn't giving an option to grant it camera/microphone permission, so that was no good. And she couldn't use it on her Macbook, because she'd previously broken her email config, which meant we had no simple way of sending her a meeting URL to click on (dyslexic, remember).
Anyway, once barakta was able to get upstairs (where she has a proper computer with room to think) and on a much lower dose of Morphine, she was able to talk her mum through installing TeamViewer on the Macbook, from where we were able to defenestrate the suspected-malware she'd installed in Chrome, discover there was nothing wrong with her email, and configure Zoom.
Which means barakta can now do video calls with her mum that are neither a) un-lip-readably out-of-sync nor b) portrait nostrilvision. So, naturally, their more recent communications have all been by conventional telephony
This is probably a good thing, as it transpires that Mrs barakta's-mum has learned how to do screenshots. Which means that she's in the habit of surreptitiously grabbing stills from video calls and spamming them to her friends and relatives. (She's almost as bad at consent as she is at computers.)
She's ceremonially banned from using Facebook, for the general good of humanity. I expect the niephews will be thankful for this in a few years time.
