Skype is a free text/audio/video chat and softphone client for PCs. Version 2.0 for Linux finally includes support for webcam video. It’s still in beta, and it’s designed for a 32-bit OS, so AMD64 users have to do a little creative tweaking to get it to work.

Thanks to this tutorial on the Ubuntu Forums, getting the latest Skype up and running is a snap. Just paste the following code into a terminal. This snippet works on 64-bit Gusty (7.10), Feisty (7.04), and Edgy (6.10) installations.

cd; sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32asound2; cd ~/Desktop; wget -N boundlesssupremacy.com/Cappy/getlibs/getlibs-all.deb; wget -N -O skype-install.deb http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-ubuntu; sudo dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb; sudo dpkg -i --force-all skype-install.deb; sudo getlibs /usr/bin/skype; cd ~

Webcam Configuration

I have the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 webcam. Kopete was recognizing and using the camera right out of the box. Skype, however, wouldn’t show the webcam image in its configuration page. I thought I already had the necessary uvc driver installed, but apparently Skype didn’t agree. So, I tried this procedure from the Ubuntu documentation.

Install the prerequisites (Subversion and Video4Linux):

sudo apt-get install subversion libpt-plugins-v4l2 v4l2ucp libsdl1.2-dev

Get the latest build of the uvc driver using Subversion:

svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk

Compile and install:

cd trunk

make

make install

Then I restarted the computer. It worked, but I’m still not sure why.