Switching to Ubuntu, Part I – how to install Skype on Ubuntu
If you are in business, your companies’ IT policy is perhaps to run Microsoft products like Windows OS only. Although you might have a bit of freedom in this manner (let’s say because you are presenting on Open Source software fairs and need to run a Linux for this case) the switch might be not that easy thinking about Microsoft Exchange, Skype, VPN, Microsoft Office and so on. For me, it is really fun working on Linux and I would like to switch over completely as soon as possible. That’s why I ran Kubuntu as a parallel operating system.
Somehow, I got rid of running KDE on my Ubuntu installation and so I decided to install the Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10) on a Gnome basis and I was really surprised about it’s simple handling. By the way: Gnome was suspect to me all the times I tried it before. Today I believe it was only about a simple and stupid marketing effect: I didn’t like the combination of brown, purple and orange on the desktop…
So now, let’s beginn with the Skype installation.
As you might know, Skype is proprietary software but obviously everybody in IT uses it. Nevertheless, the installation on Ubuntu is possible even including the update services. First of all you have to implement the Medibuntu sources to your sources.list file running this command on the terminal:
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list \
--output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list &&
sudo apt-get -q update &&
sudo apt-get --yes -q --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring &&
sudo apt-get -q update
As a next step, install the Skype application:
sudo aptitude install skype
Despite Skype is only provided with version 2.1 on Linux, you are done mate! Somehow you will be connected to your colleagues, friends, etc. in this first step. More to follow.