linux and skype and misery and happiness

(Preamble: this guide applies to ubuntu)

Ok so there was a time when the appeal of Skype’s linux version lied in the lack of features and fancy ui. It was stable and my life was awesome.

Then new versions were released and new features were added. Some day Microsoft joined the party (not necessarily concluding that Skype’s change for the worse has something to do with them). Somewhere between then and now Skype became a real imposition for my life. Random crashes on chat, permanent crashes on calls. I gave up on it, using solely my android’s version for calls.

Once upon a time, which is now, I gave it another shot, crawled the internet for solutions and found the following:

• Don’t use the official version that can be downloaded from their website
• Do this instead:

  
  $ sudo apt-get remove --purge skype
  $ sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ $(lsb_release -sc) partner"
  $ sudo apt-get install skype
  

Now the ugly task indicator is back and everything is stable again.