How to Install Ring Soft phone on Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora

We have done a tutorial about qTox and Telegram before. Both of them claim to respect user’s privacy. This tutorial is going to show you how to install ring on Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora. Ring is a free and open source (GPL3), peer-to-peer soft phone and instant messenger developed by Savoir-faire Linux and community contributors around the world.

Ring is available on Linux, Mac OS, Windows and Android. It aims to be an Skype replacement, allowing its users to make audio and video calls, in pairs or groups, and to send messages, safely and freely, in confidence, requiring no centralized server to establish communication. At the time of this writing (June 2016), Ring is still in beta.

highlights of Ring:

• SIP compatible
• There is no central server to track you. Ring uses OpenDHT to hide the public identity of Ring users.
• Use TLS/SRTP to secure connection and communications over the network
• Protect users from man-in-the-middle attack
• Supports PulseAudio out of the box.
• Supports attended transfer (aka, announced transfer).

Install Ring Soft phone on Ubuntu 16.04/14.04

Ring has an official APT repository so it’s relatively easy to install. Open up a terminal and run the following commands.

First, run the following command to add the official Ring repository to Ubuntu.

For Ubuntu 16.04

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb https://dl.ring.cx/ring-nightly/ubuntu_16.04/ ring main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ring-nightly-man.list"

For Ubuntu 14.04

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb https://dl.ring.cx/ring-nightly/ubuntu_14.04/ ring main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ring-nightly-man.list"

Then import the GPG signing key in order to verify package integrity.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A295D773307D25A33AE72F2F64CD5FA175348F84

Enable Ubuntu’s universe repository.

sudo add-apt-repository universe

Update package list and install Ring.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ring-gnome

Install Ring Soft phone on Debian 8 Jessie

The process is roughly the same.

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb https://dl.ring.cx/ring-nightly/debian_8/ ring main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ring-nightly-man.list"

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A295D773307D25A33AE72F2F64CD5FA175348F84

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ring-gnome

Install Ring Soft phone on Fedora 23/24

First use the dnf package manager to add the official repo.

Fedora 23

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://dl.ring.cx/fedora_23/ring-nightly-man.repo

Fedora 24

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://dl.ring.cx/fedora_24/ring-nightly-man.repo

Then install Ring.

sudo dnf install ring-gnome-nightly

Starting Ring

Ring can be started from application menu or by typing this command in the terminal:

ring.cx

Using Ring

Start Ring, add a picture as your avatar and choose a username. Then you will see your Ring ID which is 40 characters.

To make a phone call, you simply need to enter your contact’s Right ID in the search bar which is located at the upper left corner. Then Press Enter and wait for the call accepted.

Create a SIP Account

Ring is SIP compatible, so you can create a separate SIP account other than the default Ring account and use this SIP account to call other SIP accounts.

Click the gear icon on the upper-right corner, then select Accounts tab and select SIP on the bottom-left corner, click the + sign.

Under the General tab, complete your SIP account parameters (hostname, username and password).

I hope this article helped you to install and use Ring soft phone on Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora. Comments, questions or suggestions are always welcome. If you found this post useful, ? please share it with your friends on social media! Stay tuned for more Linux tutorials.