Arch Linux User Repository

Microsoft is finally shutting down Skype in May

There is a problem with Skype being stuck on the login screen on first launch. That happens when your org.freedesktop.secrets provider doesn't have a keyring configured, i.e. also first launch.

I don't know if this is a quirk of libsecret or Skype itself, but we can't do pretty much anything about it anyway.

Solutions are simple though:

1. Despite the login screen being stuck, the login itself is actually successful. So just kill it and run Skype again, it should be fine after that.

2. Configure your default keyring manually (using seahorse, kwalletmanager etc.) before running Skype.

To get automatic login, install a package that provides org.freedesktop.secrets, e.g. gnome-keyring.

To get a systray icon, install libappindicator-gtk3. On GNOME, then install the appindicator extension.

Are you sure it won't break X11? Did you test that with X11?

--ozone-platform-hint=auto can be used instead, as described in https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland#Electron

Also --enable-webrtc-pipewire-capturer may solve issues with screen capture. Not tested it though.

@MajorMayor, you cp /usr/local/share/applications/skypeforlinux.desktop ~/.local/share/applications and then edit it how you want but I'd first work out why your system is busted since it works fine for the rest of us using GNOME on Wayland.

@MajorMayer

Not a maintainer, just a passerby user.

This doesn't start at all on Gnome / Wayland

That's odd, it should work under XWayland no problem. I was just recently helping to a colleague using Ubuntu, where Skype couldn't share the screen because its engineers way behind everyone on making their app work natively on Wayland.

Are you sure you have xorg-xwayland package installed? Do other XWayland apps work for you?

Can you maybe also add "--ozone-platform=wayland --enable-eatures=WaylandWindowDecorations" to the .desktop file

Are you sure it won't break X11? Did you test that with X11?

This doesn't start at all on Gnome / Wayland which is the default protocol on Manjaro at least (not sure what it is on Arch). Can you maybe also add "--ozone-platform=wayland --enable-eatures=WaylandWindowDecorations" to the .desktop file?

@willgame, yes the skype devs appear to have changed the content of the skypeforlinux-stable-bin and skypeforlinux-preview-bin source tgz files but have kept the same file names and versions (yuck!). So I have updated the checksums for both packages. I also now embed the $pkgrel in the download file names to avoid integrity checksum errors for any users who have cached the previous file. Unfortunately, if this happens again, then all we can do is rely on users to message me here.

    Building skypeforlinux-stable-bin...
    ==> Making package: skypeforlinux-stable-bin 8.100.0.203-1 (Вт 01 авг 2023 11:44:11)
    ==> Checking runtime dependencies...
    ==> Checking buildtime dependencies...
    ==> Retrieving sources...
      -> Found skypeforlinux_8.100.0.203_amd64.deb
    ==> Validating source files with sha256sums...
        skypeforlinux_8.100.0.203_amd64.deb ... FAILED
    ==> ERROR: One or more files did not pass the validity check!

Well comparing that version to all the other versions listed there pretty clearly seems a typo.

https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA12041/what-is-the-latest-version-of-skype-on-each-platform

@InFerNo, if you are going to say that "Skype claims the latest version to be .." then one would expect you to post a link to where that is claimed.

Skype claims the latest version to be "Skype for Linux version 8.984.0.206", which is wildly different from the version numbers this package currently has (8.99.0.403-1). How come it's so different?