Skype 2.1 beta 2 aka Talking Screens for Linux
Welcome the Talking Screens, our newest Skype for Linux release.
Start downloading it now and keep reading.
This release brings to you many features what you have asked from us especially screen sharing, instant message quoting and support for user interface styling. In addition to these we now also support abuse reporting on Linux and we have implemented support for localized time formats. This is not all there are many other smaller improvements inside to be found.
We took also a bunch of time to iron out many of the issues you were reporting to us on our forums and public issue tracker or by just commenting our blog posts. Please continue to do so.
Full release notes are following:
]]>Known issues:
General
* Logging out and in may cause Skype to crash.
* Using Oxygen Style might lead to graphical issues.
* On Debian amd64 version Skype crashes on startup with the message: “Inconsistency detected by ld.so: dl-open.c: 623: _dl_open: Assertion `_dl_debug_initialize (0, args.nsid)->r_state == RT_CONSISTENT’ failed!”
– This seems to be Debian only issue with 32 bit PulseAudio libraries being installed even if PulseAudio is not active, a workaround can be:
– Debian Lenny: sudo chmod a-r /usr/lib32/libpulse{-simple.so.0.0.1,.so.0.4.1}
– Debian Squeeze: sudo chmod a-r /usr/lib32/libpulse{-simple.so.0.0.2,.so.0.8.0,common-0.9.15.so}
* On some amd64 distributions avatars are not showing, this is a problem with 32-bits emulation Qt library. Qt tries to find its image format plugins, but finds a 64-bits version instead and fails to load it.
A workaround is to specify a plugin path when launching skype like this:
– Ubuntu 64 bit: install “ia32-libs” package and launch Skype with: QT_PLUGIN_PATH=/usr/lib32/qt4/plugins skype
– Arch 64 bit (with 32 bit chroot installed in /opt/arch32): QT_PLUGIN_PATH=/opt/arch32/usr/lib/qt/plugins skype
– Other distributions might have a different path.
Options
* When PulseAudio is enabled in the audio settings, only that specific entry will be available; to change the settings, use the PulseAudio manager tool that is bundled with your distribution.
Contact list
* Newly added contacts are not found by QuickFilter until Skype restart.
* It is not possible to drag multiple contacts to a group.
Instant Messaging
* Sometimes Instant Messages are not ordered correctly.
Video
* Sometimes receiving video shows a white square on top-left part of the window.
* Skype does not work well with newer version of GSPCA Webcams driver (Linux Kernel >=2.6.27), possible workaround:
– Ubuntu 32 bit: install “libv4l-0″ package and launch Skype with: LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype
– Ubuntu 64 bit: install “lib32v4l-0″ package and launch Skype with: LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype
– Other distributions might have the same library, but may have a different path.
* How to make video working on Logitech Quickcam Messenger [0x046d:0x08f0]
– http://www.kuhrti.de/index.php/linux/logitech-quickcam-messenger-on-linux/
– http://www.kuhrti.de/index.php/article/logitech-quickcam-messenger-on-ubuntu-9-04/
New features, improvements and bug fixes:
* 20.01.2010, version 2.1.0.81
* feature: Screen sharing.
* feature: Report abuse.
* feature: Support for UI styles.
* feature: Possibility to quote a message.
* feature: Localized time formats.
* improvement: Instant Messaging performance improvements.
* improvement: Possibility to add more email addresses to profile.
* improvement: Load all historical group conversations into event history.
* improvement: PulseAudio: Possibility to choose different audio device for ringing and notifications.
* improvement: A message is displayed when the user tries to add contacts that already are his/her buddies.
* improvement: Incoming contact request dialog.
Crashes
* bugfix: Crashes when an Instant Message is out of order.
* bugfix: Skype crashed after turning on animated emoticons.
* bugfix: Pressing F6 at login screen makes Skype to crash.
* bugfix: Skype crashes when trying to send a SMS to some invalid numbers.
* bugfix: Skype crashes when clicking on an invalid Skype Name link, ie. “skype:22?add”.
* bugfix: Skype crashes when using cancel button in “add SMS Members” window and then pushing “Add” again.
* bugfix: Crashes when clicking on popup event after logged out from Skype.
* bugfix: Crashes when calling conference call with auto send video and privacy set to “nobody”.
* bugfix: Using “CLEAR CALLHISTORY ALL” API call will cause a crash.
Profile
* bugfix: HTML injections on profile’s Home Page.
* bugfix: Local time timezone has no longer an invalid value.
Instant Messaging
* bugfix: s/old/new/ command is not escaped.
* bugfix: Editing a message will not change the timestamp of the message. The edited timestamp is displayed in the tooltip of the pencil icon.
* bugfix: A group conversation stays bookmarked when left.
* bugfix: Misordered day dividers are handled properly.
* bugfix: Instant Message search settings are not working and saved.
* bugfix: Day separator in conversations was not behaving well.
* bugfix: In some cases the Instant Message disappears until the next IM arrives.
* bugfix: Wrong message displayed when adding a group conversation picture.
* bugfix: Do not select all text when editing a message.
Contact List/Main window
* bugfix: Newly bookmarked conversation now work well with quickfilter.
* bugfix: Bookmarked conversations don’t appear in contact list if done via history for never opened IMs.
* bugfix: With QT 4.5.x contact groups get collapsed after a while.
Options
* bugfix: Option dialog resizes to fit the text.
* bugfix: Voicemail recording/resetting works better.
* bugfix: Selecting second camera to won’t work unless Apply is clicked.
* bugfix: Under SMS options the “My mobile phone number..” is always greyed out.
* bugfix: Escape key now exits fullscreen on a video call and when testing video in Video options.
* bugfix: Escape key doesn’t close “options” window.
Audio
* bugfix: No ringing sound on default Alsa device.
* bugfix: PulseAudio: AGC works better and does not put volume to 0.
* bugfix: PulseAudio: Sounds cut-off at the end and perhaps PA sound stuttering.
SMS
* bugfix: SMS character counter do not work correctly when adding emoticons.
Add/Search new contacts
* bugfix: Minor improvements for displaying error message when searching/adding existed contacts.
* bugfix: Add a Skype Contact window grows when switching back from Add a Phone Number Contact.
API
* bugfix: API: OPEN IM sends message instead of adding it to input area.
Calls
* bugfix: Calling without enough credit shows as a dropped call.
Others
* bugfix: Close change password dialog when pressing escape.
* bugfix: Declining multiple file sendings doesn’t work.
Localization
* l10n: New in bundled languages: Ukrainian – Oleh Nykyforchyn.
* l10n: Back in bundled languages: European Portuguese – Francisco Miguel Ferreira, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai.
* l10n: Updated languages: Bulgarian – Nikolay Filipov & Nikolina Filipova, German – Claudius Henrichs, Estonian – Marit Mesipuu, French – Cédric Lamouche, Italian – Marco Cimmino, Lithuanian – Viktoras Kriukovas, Polish – Karol Szastok, Brazilian Portuguese – Fabio Roselet, Romanian – Péter Henning & Mónika Iancu, Russian – Pavel Shevchuk, Turkish – Ömer Emin Dede.
* l10n: Countries and languages were not correctly translated under Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Chinese Simplified and Traditional.
I don’t see any screen sharing – where should I be looking?
@joe-freedom-turner In the call window under menu button. (Start a call first!)
–disable-cleanlooks option has gone in this Skype release, is it now possible to use system wide Qt style?
Thank you for the new version and new features. Let’s test it!
Could someone clarify two issues:
* How does the version numbering of Skype Linux client compare to version numbering of Windows/MacOSX clients?
* Is there a way to search group chats with the Linux client? Example: a user has attended several group chats in the past and wants to find a specific chat conversation. I hear this is possible to do with the conversations-tab of windows-version but how does one do this with the Linux client?
After removing Skype 2.0.0.72 from my Fedora Core 8 system, I attempted to install Skype 2.1.0.81 only to discover it requires a library I don’t have:
skype: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9′ not found (required by skype)
Then, I removed 2.1.0.81 only to discover I could no longer find an FC8 rpm for 2.0.0.72. Where is that archived?
Thank you.
Good luck finding an older version andrew_piziali. I advised the Skype Linux Client product manager (via Support) that giving people no option to roll-back from a failing beta was bad form. A beta version should not be the default and only install option on the Skype home page in my opinion.
I run Ubuntu and had to search a bunch of old Debian repositories on the web to find the old version. Maybe you can find something out in the wild for your OS too? I won’t assist in testing this beta until Skype gives me a safe option to roll back to the production release of the software. I would advise anyone else who was considering testing this install to check they have a previous installation package on their machine before starting the download. If this beta fails, I repeat, Skype gives you no way to roll back.
Sorry to be sour about the progress being made. It doesn’t take much to store two versions on the website and give people an option which to use.
The Jira ‘developer zone’ doesn’t give any clue about which issues are fixed in this beta, which is a shame too, and the change log above doesn’t tie fixed bugs to issue numbers. Come on Skype, some professionalism in your releases would be much appreciated.
All I want is two things:
1. To be able to join an in-progress group call
2. Not crash
You still need to create shortcut LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype in Ubuntu Karmic x64 to make video work, when will this be fixed. The Medibuntu version worked fine without any need of shortcuts etc.
Skype Team
Congratulations on releasing a new version on skype for linux but I have to agree with phil_ayres on safe practices.
It is absolutely essential that there is a mechanism for roll back.
From the release notes I can see that an essential feature has been added:
On pulseaudio the ability to choose different audio device for ringing and notifications.
This is great news because the previous beta was not very useful for lots of skype users.
There is one more essential feature which is very useful and is expected on any serious telephony product: Call Waiting.
It is available on the windows version. Is there an ETA on the Linux Version?
Working great! THANK YOU
-=terry=-
opensuse 11.2 64b pulseaudio
hi,
When i launch skype and share total screen, skype crash qith message :
skype: /home/jimb/unix.mnt/src/pkg/vp7plugin/colorcnv.c :77 : VP7YV12Source_Resize: L’assertion « ! ( (int) width & 15) » a échoué
under Ubuntu karmic 9.10
It seems great ! However, for Hardy users, it is very unsatisfied that we have no option to install. As Hardy has lifetime for more than one year, can you prepare the package for Hardy ? I’ve seen 2.1 beta package for Hardy short time ago … was that mirage?
I can’t imagine it’s just me but perhaps it is. When I go to download, nothing happens. It just keeps refreshing the download page each time. Was the beta pulled all of a sudden or something? I’m running Ubuntu 9.10 with Firefox 3.5.7. Any ideas?
Localized time formats? I have the exact opposite result. With 2.0.0.72 timestamps are displayed in 24-hour clock as they should (as I have LC_TIME=en_ZA.UTF-8 in my system) but with 2.1.0.81 timestamps have the stupid AM/PM thing.
Thats are good news!!
I hope see more advances
is it possible to get 24-hour clock back? I would prefer it to the AM/PM thing.
@ultra-fine Yes, you can either select to use the same style as defined in your desktop window manager or one of the available style options in General Options.
@ekiboy69 *This beta relase bring Skype Linux client closer to the rest of the clients when it comes to features and performance. *Try searching in the event history.
@andrew_piziali Fedora Core 8 unfortunately is an unsupported version.
@phil_ayres, I am afraid that Skype Linux 2.0.x is no longer supported from Skype and we highly recommend our users to use our latest beta relase.
@nkk001 Regarding pulseaudio, please note that you should use the pulseaudio tools such as padevchooser in order to be able to select different audio devices. This is how pulseaudio works by its design. No ETA regarding call waiting.
@ggeeoo8128 Trying specifying LANG or LC_ALL
Ok, I did some more testing about the date/time issue and here are the conclusions:
* dates seem to work correctly for all locales
* times do not work correctly for all locales (I have some examples at the end of this post)
* skype does not interpret the environment variables correctly: for dates & times the variables LC_ALL,LC_TIME,LANG should be inspected, in that particular order. Skype instead looks at LC_ALL,LANG.
From the above remarks, I reach the conclusion that skype tries to reinvent the wheel; all these things are already implemented by glibc. I don’t understand why not just do something like this:
setlocale(LC_TIME,”");
strftime(outstr, sizeof(outstr), “%X”, tm);
and let glibc do all the hard work for you.
Finally, here some examples of correct and incorrect time representations:
locale correct skype
en_US.UTF-8 8:49:03 PM 8:49:03 PM
en_GB.UTF-8 20:49:03 20:49:03
en_ZA.UTF-8 20:49:03 8:49:03 PM
de_DE.UTF-8 20:49:03 20:49:03
fr_FR.UTF-8 20:49:03 20:49:03
el_GR.UTF-8 8:49:03 μμ 8:49:03 PM
it’s great!!! it works perfectly!!! thanks a lot, we all were looking forward this new release!
thanks
Just wanted to leave a quick message that I’m using the Ubuntu x86_64 release on Debian/unstable, and the libpulse workaround mentioned in the original post solved my issues. (Machine is a HP Envy 15, internal webcam works fine). Thanks for continuing the support and releases for Linux.
I realize that getting a native 64-bit version is significantly more work than trying to wrap the 32-bit version with compat libraries. However, as 64-bit installations become increasingly popular, it may be worth investing the resources necessary for the port.
Anyways, thanks again for support Linux.
I am using Mandriva 2010 x86_64. Installed is Skype 2.0.1.81 static. Except for sound, everything works but the microphone input or output. I have pulseaudio 0.9.19 installed. It supports other applications. I cannot configure playback of my recorded voice under the Skype test facility.
Confirming that the latest Skype Version 2.1.0.81 (skype-ubuntu-intrepid_2.1.0.81-1_i386.deb) does not work on Ubuntu 8.04.4.
The following worked for me http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8919096&postcount=6
Using Ubuntu Netbook Remix (Karmic) on an Asus Eeepc 1005HA. Only ALSA as pulseaudio was a nightmare. Had (and have) no issues with version 2.1.0.47. Installed the new beta and was greeted with nothing but segmentation faults.
Mar 6 12:22:59 tiny kernel: [ 7807.831556] skype[6198]: segfault at 91ec1c0 ip 081cda92 sp bfba9f50 error 7 in skype[8048000+1069000]
Mar 6 12:23:18 tiny wpa_supplicant[1057]: CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
Mar 6 12:23:20 tiny kernel: [ 7829.523396] skype[6208]: segfault at 91ec1c0 ip 081cda92 sp bff28c80 error 7 in skype[8048000+1069000]
Mar 6 12:23:58 tiny kernel: [ 7867.080292] skype[6227]: segfault at 91ec1c0 ip 081cda92 sp bfa78680 error 7 in skype[8048000+1069000]
Like phil_ayres above, I think it would only professional for Skype to fully interact with the Linux community in a meaningful community way, such as making previous versions available so when the new one doesn’t work, one doesn’t have to scour the web in order to ge the one that worked. That said, it might also be interesting and helpful if we could install more than one version at a time – I know I wouldn’t mind beta testing for real if I knew I could fall back on my working version.
I have Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS Hardy Heron. LTS means long term support, which means there are going to be a lot of people like me using this version of the OS because it’s designed to be a stable business OS to be used for a total of 6 years from when it was released. Unfortunately, the Skype dev team decided to abandon support for users like me. I tried installing the static Skype 2.1 beta, and it works but only just as long as the power management engages on my laptop. When that occurs, and I move my mouse around to bring my laptop back, all sound and recording works fine on my laptop but not so in Skype 2.1 Beta. I then tried shutting down Skype and coming back in again, and the problem still persists on the Skype Test Call system.
Some have suggested going back to a previous version such as skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_i386.deb, but unfortunately that version has a screensharing bug where all the screen elements are tiny and in a non-resizable screen. Screensharing is *very* important to me in my work with clients.
So, I can use Skype 2.1 Beta, but only if I don’t walk away from my laptop for too long.
Skype Dev Team — please fix this if you could?
“I don’t see any screen sharing – where should I be looking?” (joe-freedom-turner)
Joe:
When you make a call, you know that square box that appears that usually has their webcam showing or an image of them (if they have installed that)? Well, on that, underneath the image, are a series of buttons. There’s one that has a popdown on it when clicked. When you click, there’s an option for screensharing, and it’s neat because you can say which screen you want (if you have more than one screen in a multiple screen arrangement).
My computer is triple-boot, I have SKYPE installed under Win-XP and under 2 brands of Linux (Mepis and Vector). Under Windows I have the option for full-screen mode, this is very convenient when I do the tutoring and show geometry drawings to my student.
Is there any full-screen option under Linux? If yes, how shall I access it?
Best wishes to all, BNK
dr.cobalt-60: Just simply double click on video screen to have full-screen video.
Hi, here on Ubuntu 8.04 amd 64:
$ skype
skype: symbol lookup error: skype: undefined symbol: _ZN10QBoxLayout13addSpacerItemEP11QSpacerItem
It crashes every time I try to use audio.
$ sudo dpkg -s pulseaudio
Package: pulseaudio
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: sound
Installed-Size: 1208
Maintainer: Ubuntu Core Developers
Architecture: amd64
Version: 0.9.10-1ubuntu1.1
@fasani: I have the same problem. But I use i386 – Version: 0.9.10-1ubuntu1.1. I think this is really a problem with pulseaudio
Hi, I had yet a version on my Hardy Heron that works. Downloadable here:
http://diuf.unifr.ch/people/ducarroz/?Skype_for_Ubuntu_8.04_LTS
Enjoy!
Can you supply a Debian 64-bit version? The 32-bit version is OK on 32-bit computers, but does not install on 64-bits ones. The 64-bit Ubuntu version crashes! Thanks in advance!!
On the download site, there is an option for a static package which includes all of the missing libraries you might run into precompiled and should run on any distribution.
Simply download as root and do the following:
tar -xjvf skype_static-2.1.0.81.tar.bz2
cd skype_static-2.1.0.81/
cp skype /usr/bin/
mkdir /usr/share/skype
cp -a avatars /usr/share/skype/
cp -a icons /usr/share/skype/
cp -a lang /usr/share/skype/
cp -a sounds /usr/share/skype/
Viola!
My husband is a genius and spent the last hour trying to piece this $h1t together. An HOUR and he can program the freaking linux kernel and what the h$ll is it about Skype not offering the old version online. Makes me want to rethink my service with them!!!!
Hello to all,
I’m using Xubuntu 10.04-1 LTS (Lucid Lynx) and MS Windows XP Pro SP3 in a dual boot system.
Unfortunately I have to report two quite serious bugs in the newest versions of Skype.
The one regards Skype 5 for Windows, so I’ll post it in the appropriate thread.
The newest Skype for Linux beta causes, when installed from a repository, every now and then a segmentation fault (the window simply disappears, regardless whether a talk is in progress or not). I tried to avoid this annoying bug by installing the dynamic-linked generic package and…no more segfaults, but this time the mic was somehow placed out of order.
Any ideas?
Best Regards and sorry for my English,
nk8215