Update on official RPM packages at the end of the post.
A few days ago Google finally enabled Gmail voice and video chat for Linux users. Being the most requested feature, it came in as a good new for Linux users, but not for non-debian based Linux users. As per the official announcement, the feature currently supports Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions only.
![screenshot e1282471488468 [Update] Google Voice and Video RPM packages now Officially Available](http://www.techtickle.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/screenshot.png "screenshot")
Although, RPM support for Gmail voice and video chat is expected to come soon, rmull dropped a comment on reddit, according to which, it is possible to use google voice and video chat on non-debian based linux distributions.
He has tested it on Gentoo, with Firefox browser. Copy & paste the code into terminal and push enter. Here it goes:
Those who are on 32-bit Linux:
mkdir goog; cd goog
wget http://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-talkplugin_current_i386.deb
ar vx google-talkplugin_current_i386.deb
sudo tar xvzf data.tar.gz -C /
Those who are on 64-bit Linux:
mkdir goog; cd goog
wget http://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-talkplugin_current_amd64.deb
ar vx google-talkplugin_current_amd64.deb
sudo tar xvzf data.tar.gz -C /
Google may enable the support for non-debian based Linux distros anytime in future, till then you can try this.
Update on Official RPM packages for Linux:
Google has released official RPM packages of Google voice and video chat. You can download and install them by visiting http://www.google.com/chat/video. If you previously installed the DEB package manually using the above installation process, please be sure to fully remove it before installing the official RPMs.
These RPMs have been built for Fedora 12 or later, but should work on any RPM-based distro provided that all dependencies are satisfied. Unfortunately on OpenSUSE the libssl.so.10 and libcrypto.so.10 symlinks are missing–you may need to create them manually. Alternative solutions in the future update are awaited.
Drop your comments and let us know if you face any issues.
![Google Voice and Video Chat Now Available for Ubuntu and Debian Linux [Update: Debian Error Fixed]](http://www.techtickle.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/gmail_voicechat.png)
I am running gentoo on an amd64, followed the above instructions and now firefox crashes right away and chromium crashes if i go to gmail. Running both from the command line yields me this:
Inconsistency detected by ld.so: dl-open.c: 611: _dl_open: Assertion `_dl_debug_initialize (0, args.nsid)->r_state == RT_CONSISTENT’ failed!
same error from both firefox and chromium.
In that case, you may like to wait for the official plugin from google to be released.