How I Got Skype Working on Kubuntu 11.10

[NoWorries]

For those who want to use Skype I found the following link http://community.skype.com/t5/Linux/...10/td-p/104494 which is for ubuntu 11.10. This works for me and I did not encounter any of the problems reported in this link. Hope you also have success.

P.S. Initially I found that the web cam microphone gave no output when using Skype. I have found that it was switched off in the Mixer control. By clicking on the Capture Devices and then on the speaker symbol for the web cam to turn it on, all worked as in Kubuntu 11.04. As before, since Skype uses Pulse Audio, the web cam microphone has to be the preferred Audio Recording in the Phonon section of the Multimedia in System Settings.

[NoWorries]

Re: How I Got Skype Working on Kubuntu 11.10

The repositories have skype:i386 listed as version 2.2.0.35-0. When I used this version I found that well into a Skype session the picture transmitted from me would significantly degrade. The transmitted rate would drop from over 100KB/s to as low as 7KB/s. I therefore downloaded and installed skype-ubuntu_2.2.0.35-1_amd64.deb for this to work I installed the following packages:

sudo apt-get install libqt4-core:i386
sudo apt-get install libqt4-gui:i386
sudo apt-get install libdbus-1-3:i386

This version solved the problem of the degradation in transmitted image quality.

Well I have finally fallen victim to having i386 packages on my 64B system. When I do a

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

the system wants to remove 273 packages. I won't bore you with the list, but after using Synaptic to selectively install those packages that wouldn't remove 273 packages, I get the following:

The following packages will be upgraded:
 ia32-libs libqt4-sql libqt4-sql:i386 libqt4-sql-mysql libqt4-sql-sqlite libqt4-test libqt4-test:i386 libqt4-xml libqt4-xml:i386 libqtcore4
 libqtcore4:i386
11 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 273 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 34.4 MB of archives.
After this operation, 502 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.

I would certainly like the package maintainers to allow i386 packages on an amd64 system. It seems that to use Skype, the packages mean that an i386 system should be install instead of an amd64 system.

[dibl]

Re: How I Got Skype Working on Kubuntu 11.10

I'm not enough of a packaging engineer to fully understand what it means, but on my currently updated 64-bit Kubuntu system I get this:

don@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-cache policy skype
skype:i386:
 Installed: (none)
 Candidate: 2.2.0.35-0oneiric2
 Version table:
   2.2.0.35-0oneiric2 0
    500 [url]http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/[/url] oneiric/partner i386 Packages
don@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install skype
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree    
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 skype:i386 : Depends: libqt4-dbus:i386 (>= 4:4.5.3) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libqt4-network:i386 (>= 4:4.5.3) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libqtcore4:i386 (>= 4:4.5.3) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libqtgui4:i386 (>= 4:4.5.3) but it is not going to be installed
       Recommends: sni-qt:i386 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

So I'm not sure how you installed it in the first place -- perhaps it was previously installable at a point in time, but it is not installable today. It is indeed a 32-bit package, and it looks there is a problem pulling in the dependencies -- either they are not yet packaged or there is wrong location information for them. Possibly some of those problem dependencies are involved in the video transmission problem that you encountered.

FWIIW, on my 64-bit Debian system, the downloaded 64-bit .deb package that is for "Debian 5+" is working correctly.

[pisacksen]

Re: How I Got Skype Working on Kubuntu 11.10

Getting the following error when I initiate skype:

skype: error while loading shared libraries: libQtDBus.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I've been noticing that libqt*:i386 have been added, and, most recently deleted. One day, it will work, another day, it will not.

Open to suggestions.

[NoWorries]

Re: How I Got Skype Working on Kubuntu 11.10

Looks like I must have installed Skype in a window of opportunity when the dependencies could be installed without breaking my system. The problems started when updates to the packages:

ia32-libs libqt4-sql libqt4-sql:i386 libqt4-sql-mysql libqt4-sql-sqlite libqt4-test libqt4-test:i386 libqt4-xml libqt4-xml:i386 libqtcore4 libqtcore4:i386

occurred. Hopefully, a future update will fix the problem.

Possibly some of those problem dependencies are involved in the video transmission problem that you encountered.

When I had Skype 2.2.0.35-0 installed, I already had the required dependencies installed. In a Skype session with my Son, he was commenting on the video quality degrading. This was solved by restarting the Skype session. As it kept happening, I removed the version 2.2.0.0.35-0 and installed the 35-1 version. From then on, no problems were encountered. So I think this newer version fixes this problem.

For the time being I will use Synaptic to upgrade all packages other than those listed above. After this I will then check to see what happens if I try any of the problem packages, and only accept if they are not going to remove 273 packages