After more than 3 years of development, Skype for Linux has lost its beta tag and hit version 4.0. An update that landed on Thursday codenamed “Four Rooms for Improvement” sees the app catapult from version 2.2 to 4.0, closing the gap that had existed between the various desktop versions of the VoIP client.
If you have used Skype on Windows or Mac OS X recently then the changes won’t strike you as particularly new, but Linux users have been waiting a while for such an update. The Skype team have highlighted four main areas in which major improvements have been made, and they are:
- A unified view for all text chats, rather than separate windows for each.
- A brand new view for voice calls.
- Improved audio quality.
- Improved video quality as well as a wider range of supported cameras.
Version 4.0 is a big update seeing further improvements to stability, synchronisation between chats, load speeds and localisation as the Czech and Norwegian are added to the list of supported languages. The Skype team have advised users to be patient the first time they run the new version, noting:
“The very first time you start Skype for Linux 4.0 [it] might take a few minutes (depending on how lengthy your chat history is). Please do not close Skype during this time. Subsequent starts will load much more quickly.”
The new release is available for download from the Skype for Linux homepage, with versions available for 64 and 32-bit installs of Ubuntu and Debian, as well as 32-bit editions for Fedora and OpenSUSE.
Do you use Skype on Linux? What do you think of the new version? Let us know, in the comments below.
Source: Skype Blog
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I’ve installed and used it on an older pc running xubuntu 11.10. The older version was terribly unstable, freezing and often losing the sound. This new version seems to be very stable in comparison. I may even let it autoload on startup which I was always afraid to do before.
Glad to hear it. The last time I used Linux as a main OS Skype was pretty awful, so I’m glad that they’ve finally sorted it out. Let’s just hope they can keep all versions up to date with the latest features, Linux too!
Just installed the fedora 16 rpm on my Fedora 15 which is running on iMac 27 hardware. It works! It took a lot of effort to get the 2.2 Beta working, this just worked, though that could be due to previous Pulse audio manipulation to make 2.2 work.
Yay! This makes me happy. :D
Finally… However, does the GUI look any better?
Skype for Linux looked terrible before- unfortunately, I just got a new laptop which came with Windows by default so I can not simply install it and see (well, I don’t feel like installing Linux just yet and I’m not about to hurry it up just for Skype).
A more beautiful front gui needed to make skype for linux more beautiful
100% worse. The Linux version now has a minimum width of over 500 pixels, an annoying sidebar that sits on the side of the chat window, and still doesn’t support my webcam (though every other Linux app I run DOES). Awful.
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Why is that you use “much more quickly” when much simpler is “much quicker”?!
It’s a quote from the announcement blog post, so maybe you should direct your question at the Skype team. I honestly don’t think it really matters, despite “much quicker” reading better I’d guess that English isn’t the author’s first language (his name is Marco Cimmino).
The dark blue highlight of the nicks in my main window is horrible as i can hardly make out the user’s name etc…. How can I change it?
new version of skype looses Beta tag, at the same time with –secondary option. What a pity….