Updates from Microsoft owned Skype is coming in thick and fast. And surprisingly, the world’s most anti-Linux company has been steadily updating its Skype for Linux client. Skype and Microsoft last week released Skype 4.1 for Linux . One of the new features of this release is that, it now enables users to login to the Skype client using MSN, Live, Hotmail and Outlook accounts and chat with each other.
If you download the new Skype 4.1 package from the Skype website, you will see there is a new multi-arch package available for Ubuntu 12.04. This essentially means that this package can be used in both 32 and 64 bit versions of Ubuntu. Now, installing Skype should be straight forward, but in reality, it isn’t, especially if you have an existing version of Skype installed. I tried isntalling via GUI and via command line. While installing Skype 4.1 via USC or gdebi, it did not show any errors and it did not install either. After a few tries, I took the command line route. This is where the error came to light.
sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/skype-ubuntu-precise_4.1.0.20-1_i386.deb
[sudo] password for ~:
dpkg: error processing ~/Downloads/skype-ubuntu-precise_4.1.0.20-1_i386.deb (–install):
skype:i386 4.1.0.20-1 (Multi-Arch: no) is not co-installable with skype:amd64 4.0.0.8-1 (Multi-Arch: no) which is currently installed
Errors were encountered while processing:
~/Downloads/skype-ubuntu-precise_4.1.0.20-1_i386.deb
So, to install the new Skype package you would need to remove the old Skype 4.0.8 package from the Ubuntu Software Centre or via the command line:
sudo apt-get purge skype
Once the old package is removed, double click on the .deb Skype package to continue with the installation or use the following command in a terminal:
sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/skype-ubuntu-precise_4.1.0.20-1_i386.deb
UPDATE
The Ubuntu Software center now has the latest verion of Skype. But that package also has a problem. It doesn’t install in a 64bit Ubuntu installation. Below is an error from command line and the USC
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 : Depends: skype-bin
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
The workaround is to install skype-bin:i386 from USC. It installs the Skype 4.1 as well.
There is a bug which prevents the update of Skype from 4.0 to 4.1 on 64bits systems. It has been reported and is being fixed. See bugs #1082030 and #1082025 on Launchpad.
You shouldn't run the last command-line you mention on 64bits systems, because it installs the 32bits version of Skype 4.1. Just wait for the bug to be fixed.
When you download from Skype's website, you are presented with only that version of the package for 12.04 multiarch, which is still present at the time of writing this reply.
I was talking about Ubuntu partner repository (what you see through USC, Software Updates, Synaptic, etc).