Not to be antagonistic, but what the hell is wrong with your computer? In the old days, we'd say PEBCAK.

Honestly, no idea. People keep suggesting Google, so it must work for some people. But every time I try it, different computers, different locations, no matter what, it’s so laggy it’s unusable.

Sorry but it's likely something is messed up with your computer or your internet connection. It works for billions of people, something is off. Google meets is not some inherently not-working piece of software.

Different computers, different internet connections, even in completely different parts of the world. Maybe Google just has a vendetta against me.

weirdly for me google meet is the only one that works and everything /else/ has problems, especially discord.

Do yourself, friends and family a favour and stop trying on different computers. You're installing spyware on all those machines.

Google Meet is a browser app.

Zoom may be kind of scummy, but the tradeoffs they made created a program easy enough for grandparents and CEOs alike to use, and that counts for something. The first time I used Zoom with some family members during the pandemic, they were audibly impressed with how easy it was, and these were people who use FaceTime regularly. The bar is reset now.

Counter example: installed zoom years ago for a job interview

Didn't work (Linux, Wayland even). We switched to discord for the interview.

Uninstalled zoom, never installed it again.

All my clients use alternatives and I am sooo glad.

I should clarify: my clients range from multi billion dollar companies to small to medium sized ones.

The big ones use teams or such, the smaller ones are more flexible

Wherever we can, we use jitsi

On Ubuntu Linux (for years) I've used the following without issue, ranging from multiple times to every day, video and audio:

Hangouts Google Meet Skype Zoom Teams

Also, Wayland had issues years ago, that may have been related to the issue you experienced.

I am on arch for over 10 years and I had issues with audio. They could hear me, but I couldn't here them. Not on speakers, not on headphones.

We even tried X11, just to make sure... No idea why I mentioned wayland, I blame it on the temperature, sorry!

This kind of mirrors my experience, all the other apps are wonky or provide a worse experience. For example with Slack, if we (UK) video call with colleagues from the US, it's usually laggy, pixelated and delayed, so we have to use Zoom.

I use Google Meet almost daily without problems with Ubuntu and Firefox