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Now that Skype got discontinued for Linux and only the 5 beta version is avalable, Linux users have a problem, which is how to communicate with Mac and Windows users. There have been lately a lot of questions regarding the installation of Skype and alternatives for Skype but I think the real problem comes when you

  1. Absolutely need to use Skype because everyone else you work with uses Skype
  2. Need video for the conference calls with those people
  3. Need to share your screen while on the conference call

As far as I know, you can't do numbers 2 and 3 if you have to follow 1. That is, there is no way you can natively use Skype to participate on conference calls held from Windows/Mac computers since Skypeforlinux lacks support for conference calls and outgoing screen sharing. (There are even problems for regular video calls!)

My question is, if you absolutely have to use Skype on Linux, is there any way around this?

The only answer I could come up with was Skype+wine, but it doesn't appear to work. I have spent several hours lately trying to install Skype 7 using wine but the installation fails with "connection problems". Installing Skype 6 also doesn't work because the link seems to be broken.

Is there any way around this that I'm missing?

EDIT

As of today version 5.4 Beta is releases which apparently fixes the conference call issue. Although the screen sharing is still not possible.

EDIT 2

Seems like skype preview now has all functionalities, making my question obsolete.

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  • Well... I personally refuse to use Skype for a number of reasons. There are tons of (better) alternatives: jitsi, Ryver, Slack to name but a few.
    – anon
    Commented Jul 14, 2017 at 17:07
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    @maulinglawns I understand there are several much better alternatives (ring is one that's becoming quite dominant I think), but please see item 1 again. This is for people, like me, that simply can't force everyone else they work with to switch from Skype to something else. It would be amazing if everyone would just drop Skype and move to anything else, but that's not going to happen mainly because of Windows users.
    – TomCho
    Commented Jul 14, 2017 at 17:11

3 Answers 3

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Apparently the Skype preview is out. Screen Share and video calling works great. Skype Package Link.

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  • Why the downvote? This is as good an answer as any
    – Chris Davies
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 22:16
  • This looks promising. Is that something "developed" by the Arch community or it an official effort by Microsoft?
    – TomCho
    Commented Sep 14, 2017 at 2:02
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I don't consider an actual solution to the problem, but so far the only possible workaround I have found is to use Jitsi Meet online.

Amazingly, even though this works through the web browser, it supports video conferences and screen sharing (plus browser sharing and more stuff). You do have to download a chrome/chromium plugin if you want to broadcast your screen though, but it's easy enough that anybody using Windows/Mac can just open a link, without any registration.

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Another option besides of installing Skype Preview is to patch the good old Skype 4.3 to make it mimick Skype Preview:

# sed -i 's/4\.3\.0\.37/8.3.0.37/' /usr/bin/skype

(where the Skype path may differ depending on your installation).

After version patching it still can successfully connect to Skype servers. However notice that it lacks some of new Skype features such as quoting and displaying images right in the client. Moreover, even before the shutdown it already had problems with calls depending on what Skype clients other peers are using, and it can become more unusable at any moment.

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