About 22 months ago, Google launched a voice and video chat feature within Gmail, allowing many people to have live, face-to-face conversations with their friends and colleagues.  Now, a few more folks – Linux users – will finally be permitted to take advantage of it, too.

Late yesterday, Tristan Schmelcher, a software engineer, wrote on the Gmail Blog, "If you’ve been wanting to use voice and video chat on Linux (our top video chat request), then we have good news for you: it’s now available!"

Schmelcher then spilled some specifics by continuing, "Visit gmail.com/videochat to download the plugin and get started.  Voice and video chat for Linux supports Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions, and RPM support will be coming soon."

This development represents a respectable nod to the Linux community if you believe in the phrase "better late than never."  And it’s not like Google could have improved the situation by waiting longer.

Still, it’s hard to imagine Linux users aren’t feeling a little underappreciated due to the 22-month delay, so the matter of how quickly RPM support does (or doesn’t) arrive will bear watching.

Going forward, Google might want to do a better job of keeping the latest versions of other products and services available to Linux users, as well.