Skype for Linux 1.3 Gold
Download Skype for Linux 1.3 Gold now.
Thank you to all of you who downloaded it during beta and helped us to test and improve this version.
Cue the dancing penguins, update your repositories, and generally rejoice! As noted on Berkus’ site we have finally released Skype for Linux 1.3 Gold.
Although a long time coming, it was worth the wait. Improved sound quality and support for the ALSA sound system. Finding contacts has now been made easier with Quickfilter – all you need to do is start typing the first few letters in a contact’s name to see all the contacts that match your search immediately.
For a full list of changes/fixes/features please consult our CHANGELOG
So please check out Skype for Linux 1.3 and call up all your friends to tell them how cool Skype is, and how you pronounce the word ‘Linux’.
Congrats on the Gold release! Thanks for the development and looking forward to future versions.
Subliminal message: video
I have bought Logitech Quickam chat for Skype, get it working with the help of drivers from http://mxhaard.free.fr (http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?p=618994#post618994) and now I am impatiently waiting for the Skype for Linux with video support. Any estimates on Skype+video for Linux release date ?
btw, can’t you make a gtk2 version of skype just for me? I don’t like to run two sets of libraries
Unfortunately this version still suffers from the same problem experienced with the betas, which makes it unusable for me.
Duing a Skype Test call, on my system (AMD64/SUSE 10.1) the playback is fine, but my voice on playback sounds like a tape being played at a very slowed down speed, and occasionally drops out altogether.
I’ve tried with both Alsa and OSS output, with the same result.
I use a Plantronics USB headset, which works fine with Skype version 1.2.0.18.
Seems like there are still bugs to iron out before this version is up to scratch.
I have to agree on the bugs, the quality of this release is really disappointing. I’m having trouble with skype freezing up my system whenever its trying to play an event sound for a period of time that seems to correspond to however long its been since it last played the sound.. 5 or even 10 seconds of lag would be understandable, finding and loading the file off the disk.. but when my entire desktop is frozen for 120 seconds or more after a day of not touching skype when, say, someone starts a chat with me. I’m thinking about just giving up on voip till it gets better.
I’m also having a problem which I reported to the Linux skype devs back in beta where skype always uses whatever my default alsa sound device is instead of its own audio in/out settings (it does obey ringer though), not even caring if its set on ALSA or OSS, so now in order to make it even work apart from the freezes, I have to have scripts to switch my default sound device between my main sound system and my headset.
all this after upgrading my whole system to edgy eft under the instruction of the devs to get a newer version of alsa that supposedly doesn’t have a bug that they couldn’t work around.
this ‘release’ is of the quality of a beta at best, and shouldn’t have ever passed release candidate status.
My main issue with this release is that Skype is an extremely bad ALSA citizen. ALSA’s whole point, compared to OSS, is being able to share an audio device and yet, Skype complains about “problems with the sound device” if anything else is accessing the device. This is a BIG no-no, because desktop environments have sound daemons that always run in the background and Skype MUST co-operate with them at all times. Please fix this and re-release ASAP! Thanks.
I am sorry but I have to aggree with all the posts above.
I have exactly the same experience with all the beta versions
including this new one 1.3.0.53:
After starting skype I can call, chat, what ever I want to do but
after some time of not touching skype, if someone calls me or I want to call someone the CPU goes up to 100% and the speech is squeezed until I restart skype. This did not happen with the version 1.2.0.18
I have SUSE 10.1, kernel 2.6.18 and a Sony DR-260 USB Headset on my Sony VAIO Laptop.
Please, please work on it and remove this bug.I can not believe that you can not reproduce this or that you can not solve this bug.
Thanks in advance.
Some sort of built in Skype-link support would be nice. Such as an adress-bar in skype into which you can copy the “skype:***”-link thingey. The about:config-thing doesn’t work
why skype linux doesn’t support video?
it is bad because i’m a frecuent user of windows skype and i want to emigrate to linux, and that thing let me down… anyways, i hope you can’t fix this problem… because it’s a BIG user experience problem.
when video?
ps: i have problem with the last relase, when someone goes online, my pc go to freeze for few seconds…
Video on Mac is now available … but where is Linux ??
Any release date ?
To make penguins happy
As mentioned previously, ALSA under SKYPE 1.3 should be reworked as soon as possible;
Experience is: The Audio out with USB devices are working fine; but the Audio-IN with USB microphones are definitely not working. That’s (the audio in) what’s the most important for sound quality improvemnets.
It starts to be urgent now for the development team of LINUX-Skype to finally make a working release.
When you compare, FC6 is going now very well and debian’s too, soo, linux users need Skype with Alsa.
Courage
The result with the USB microphones:
Static binary tar.bz2 with Qt compiled in (14.0 MB)
is working for audio in and audio out.
If the packages for your distro is not working, make a try with the Static binary tar.bz2 with Qt compiled. It s worth the try.
On the other hand, even with booting / setting up with alsamixer, the sound is too low and better results are obtaine d under Skype-WindowsEnvironement.
At least it works, Thank you
Skype video for Linux PLEASE!
I don’t have any other problems with this release though but the video is a must have. Let me expunge Windows from my home.
Same issue as with telefonchris. CPU goes to 100% after 3-4 call or certain period of inactivity.
FC5, 2.6.18, Skype 1.3.0_53. Dell XPS M170
Love the ALSA support.
The one problem I have been having is with Skype Chat. Chatting with somebody causes my “X” process to burn an insane amount of CPU.
I’ve tried clearing my chat history, though I don’t see how that would have given “X” grief. It seems to be a little better now.
But overall, BIG KUDOS to you guys for keeping us Linux guys included.
I also, have had some audio problems with Ubuntu 6.10 and Skype 1.3.0.53. At first, the audio level was too low. A work around seems to be loading GNOME ALSA mixer, then setting Mic Boost(+20db) on. This provided adequate volumes and quality with the Test Call. However, in actual practice, the incoming volume was too high and distorted. Lowering the volume settings did not improve the quality.
May be you need a volunteer to make a VideoSkype for Linux? Contact me, if so. Can’t say that I have a lot of free time, but I’m interested in it.
I followed the discussions on the betas and decided to stay away until the bugs were fixed, unfortunately the other comments indicated that there are still serious bugs in this release. So for the time being I’m still at 1.1.0.3! And I’m forced to stay there – I really hope there’ll be a bugfix release soon. (Too many problems with the previous release version too, I purged that one from my system fast enough — didn’t close the audio device and whatnot.)
i found a little bug: when you send b) , it’s displayed only as omg,bug!, but it seems to be sended ok (non linux versions of skype recieve b) and not omg,bug!).
Firstly, thank you to Skype and the devopers for making the effort to support linux. While I am an avid linux and open-source supporter, I recognise how much effort it can take to make a piece of software compatible with the various linux versions and distros, and then to maintain that compatibility over time. (I am involved in maintaining a linux driver…)
Secondly, I am happy to report that this version seems to work much more easily with my Fedora Core distro than my previous Skype installation. Sound worked straight out of the box, and the voice of the test call was much clearer than previously.
I had some wierdness getting the microphone to work. To begin with, the microphone only worked if I started Skype under artsdsp, but later I tried once again without artsdsp, and the microphone worked… so go figure.
I haven’t had the chance to test the new version with an extended call, or after it has been running for an extended time, so I can’t comment on others’ experiences there.
Thanks again,
Cheers!
Nik.
Hi,
Also have to confirm that on two of my machines skype eats up 100% of the CPU regularly (IBM TP X24 with Alsa (snd-intel8x0) running 2.6.18 or 2.6.20 (i686) and Dell Inspiron 2200 with Alsa running 2.6.18).
Occurs after skype being idle for some time or after issuing a few phone calls. Skype is not usable at that time anymore and I sometimes even have to unload/reload the alsa module to be able to use Skype again.
Also video is still a very important feature missing ,
thanks,
Tom
So when do we get to see the 3.0 version?
Or even the 2.5 version would be enough.
At least one that works with pulseaudio