After a loooongg, looong waiting finally a New
Version of Skype 4.0 is out - Skype 4 on Debian GNU / Linux short
review
After about 3 years of no new version for GNU / Linux finally Skype
has released a new version of Skype.
I thought already there will be never a new skype version out for
GNU / Linux, since the moment Microsoft purchased skype.
Now suddenly and quite in quiet the new version of
Skype 4.0
is out for download from Skype's website. The
latest Skype download for Linux is to be found
here
As of time of writting this post there are Skype 4 versions for
following Linux-es;;;
- Ubuntu 10.04 32 / 64-bit (probably would work fine on latest
Ubuntus too)
- Debian 6.0 Squeeze 32 / 64-bit
- Fedora 16 / 32 bit
- OpenSUSE 12.1 32bit (only)
Most likely the Ubuntu release of skype 4 will work flawlessly on
Linux Mint and other debian derivatives.
The original
Skype 4 version release by Microsoft is found here
The release mentions, Skype 4 is supposed to have 4 major
advancements and the gap in interface and usability with latest Mac
OS and M$ Windows Skype versions is now filled.
The four major changes said in the announcement are;;;
- 1. a new Conversations View where users can easily track all of
their chats in a unified window.
Those users who prefer the old view can disable this in the Chat
options;
- 2. a brand new Call View;
- 3.Call quality has never been better thanks to several
investments we made in improving audio quality;
- 4. Improved video call quality and extended support for more
cameras.
Some of the minor improvements in those
- new Linux skype
- are:
- improved chat synchronization
- new presence and emoticon icons
- the ability to store and view phone numbers in a Skype contact's
profile
- much lower chance Skype for Linux will crash or freeze
- chat history loading is now much faster
- support for two new languages: Czech (flag:cz) and Norwegian
(flag:no)
Just like with prior Skype releases 2.0 and 2.2beta this release
comes with almost same list of non-english language support
,,,
Seeing those announcement, I've hurried to download and test skype
4 on my 64-bit desktop running Debian 6 Squeeze.
Once downloaded to install the pack
skype-debian_4.0.0.7-1_amd64.deb I used the usual dpkg
-i i,e,;;;
noah:~# dpkg -iskype-debian_4.0.0.7-1_amd64.deb
.........
.....
Just like the release announcement mentions the first initial
launch of Skype 4 took about 3 or 4 minutes doing something
(probably sending half of my hard disk data to Microsoft :) ) along with
importing the prior skype data and chat history :)
The minimum software dependencies for correct operation of Skype
are:
Qt libraries; D-Bus; libasound and pulseaudio
Here are few screenshots of Skype 4 to give you an idea what to
expect:
The Skype Options is almost identical to Skype 2.2. One interesting
new feature I've noticed is Skype WIFI
Unfortunately to use Skype WIFI you need to have purchased skype
credits.
Another notable difference is the organization of Skype Chats,
which is more like in the good old times of mIRC and IRC chat
clients
Here is also the list of Skype emoticons including bundled with
Skype 4:
The "look & feel" of the new interface gives the impression of
seriously improved Skype client stability too.
There was a minor trouble with the voice recording (microphone)
with Skype 4;
To make the microphone work properly I had to raise up the mic
volume from PulseAudio settings in Skype options.
Well that's all the only unpleasent thing for this new skype is it
is using KDE's libQT and seems not to have a native interface for
GNOME via GTK2. If we put away this I guess this version of Skype
is much more stable and therefore I would recommend anyone to
update.
Of course we never know if this new updated more stable Skype
release is not filled up with backdoors or does not transfer all
our conversations to microsoft but we didn't know that even when
Skype was not Microsoft's so and since it is not a free software I
guess it doesn't matter so much.
As you can guess Microsoft has imposed centralization on Skype
protocol so connecting the peers is now done by Microsoft servers
this news is another intriguing one.
According to one recent article from May 1, 2012 Microsoft Skype
replaces the Peer-to-Peer P2P supernodes with Linux boxes hosted by
Microsoft - You
can read the intriguing article here
In short that probably means that by changing this nowdays
microsoft probably now logs all chat sessions between Skype users,
even it is likely the calls between users are recorded too. We all
know Microsoft imperialism pretty well so I guess this is not a big
news .....
This new release of Skype if it is significantly more stable than
it is prior releases would certainly have serious positive
implication on the development and adoption of Linux for the
Desktop. So far I'm sure one of the obstacles of many manufacturers
of notebooks and comp equipment to ship with Linux was the lack of
a stable and easy to implement skype release for Linux.
Well that's all folks. Enjoy the New Skype Cheeres !
:)