The Linux Team of Skype recently released Skype 4.0 for Linux which sets a landmark as this means they are catching up with the Windows version – one of the primary complaints of the Linux users has been that they are way too far behind the Windows and even the Mac counterparts.
Quoting Marco Commino:
With this release, we have finally filled the gap with our other desktop clients and we are now making many of the latest Skype features, as well as a lot of UI improvements, available to our penguin lovers.
You will find four major changes in this release:
-We have 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;
-We have a brand new Call View;
-Call quality has never been better thanks to several investments we made in improving audio quality; and
-We’ve worked on improving video call quality and have also extended support for more cameras.
Of course, we have loads of other small improvements and fixes. As you can imagine, the list is so long it would take too much time to write it all, but some are worthy of mention:
-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
Now the Linux version has the same default GUI which the Windows users learned to hate so much already,
luckily they learned from the past and you can switch back to the old interface just like you can on the Windows release.
I have however to admit that I have managed to let it crash 3 times.
Now the question is, how do you install it on Mandriva 2011 x64? 32 bit is no problem, you simply copy the files of the static or dynamic release (whatever works for you) files to the folders as written in the enclosed readme file.
But this won’t work in x64. So here is how I did it:
-First I had 2.2. installed using the way I described in a blog post earlier
-Then I found that there is a 4.0 RPM for Mandriva (more info here)
If you find that the links don’t work you can find it at mandriva Users.ro
Voilla and happy Skyping! 🙂