How To Install Skype On Linux
Microsoft’s Skype is one of the largest, most used video/audio p2p calling tools on the planet. They’ve got tons of users on almost every operating system — even Linux. If you’ve looked everywhere, and can’t figure out how to get the latest version of Skype working on your Linux operating system of choice, don’t worry, it’s understandable. Skype doesn’t really have any instructions on how to get their Linux versions installed. Instead, they just tell you to download a package if you want to install Skype on Linux.
It is because of this, we’ll be going over exactly how to get the latest version of the Skype app working under Linux.
Ubuntu/Debian Instructions
Skype is available for Linux via a downloadable binary package, which means that it has excellent support for Ubuntu, Debian, and their derivatives (Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Bunsenlabs, and etc). Even though these operating systems have decent support from Microsoft, the software isn’t found in distribution software repositories. Instead, users will need to download a DEB package file from the Skype website.
Head over to Skype.com and grab the latest version of Skype and then open up a terminal window. Using the CD command, move the terminal window into the ~/Downloads directory.
cd ~/Downloads
Inside the ~/Downloads folder, use the DPKG tool to install the Debian package to the system.
sudo dpkg -i skypeforlinux-64.deb
DPKG will load Skype directly into the system, but during this process, some errors may occur. This doesn’t happen every time a package gets installed, but when it does the error you’ll need to correct it.
sudo apt install -f
After correcting any missing libraries and dependencies that Skype needs, everything should be good to go.
Arch Linux Instructions
There are multiple ways to install Skype on Arch Linux, but the best way is to grab it directly from the Arch Linux User Repository. To install, open up a terminal and clone the latest Skype AUR package to your Arch PC. Why clone instead of download? Cloning the snapshot rather than downloading a .tar.gz file containing the PKGBUILD file makes things much faster, and reduces steps for the building process.
Note: don’t have git? Install it with: sudo pacman -S git
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/skypeforlinux-stable-bin.git
Move the terminal window into the cloned Skype directory using the CD command.
cd skypeforlinux-stable-bin
To start the building process, some dependencies need to be resolved. Not to worry, it is possible to automate this. Do it by adding -si to the end of makepkg. This automatically syncs missing dependencies that the system requires (it also installs the package too).
makepkg -si
Fedora Instructions
Fedora users can install Skype via a downloadable RPM file from the Skype website. To install the RPM, follow this link. Please keep in mind, that there is no 32-bit package available for Skype. If you’re on a 32-bit version of Linux and need to use Skype, consider using the web version, or try an alternative like Discord. After getting the latest RPM file, open up a terminal window and CD into the ~/Downloads folder.
cd ~/Downloads
Using DNF, install Skype to your Fedora PC.
sudo dnf install skypeforlinux-64.rpm -y
Alternatively, have the DNF package tool download the RPM and install from a URL:
sudo dnf install https://go.skype.com/skypeforlinux-64.rpm -y
OpenSUSE Instructions
SUSE, like Fedora, has users install packages via RPM files. It is because of this, Microsoft Skype will easily install on all modern versions of Open SUSE. Grab the latest version of the Skype client from this link here, and open up a terminal. Using CD, move to the ~/Downloads folder and use Zypper to install the package on the system.
cd ~/Downloads sudo zypper install skypeforlinux-64.rpm
Snap Package Instructions
Skype is available as a snap, for those that don’t have any way to build packages from the AUR or install packages in either RPM or DEB format. To use Skype via snap, it’s important that your Linux distribution supports snap. With how popular snaps are getting, it’s hard to imagine very many Linux distributions don’t have support for it at this time.
If you don’t already have snapd working, follow our guide here and enable it. Alternatively, grab the code from github and build it yourself.
When you’ve got snaps working, install the latest version of Skype with:
sudo snap install skype --classic
Flatpak Instructions
Can’t use Snaps, DEBS or RPMS? Not to worry, there’s still a way to get Skype working on your Linux operating system of choice with Flatpak. Like Snaps, Flatpak allows any user to quickly and easily install software no matter what version of Linux they run. Best of all, since Flatpak comes from the Gnome project, you’ve probably already got it installed on your system (or can easily get it).
To get Skype working via Flatpak, first subscribe to the Flathub Flatpak repo:
sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
When Flathub is active, just install the latest version of Skype from the repo to your PC.
sudo flatpak install --from https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/com.skype.Client.flatpakref
