title: Skype brings families together link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2008/12/31/skype-brings-families-together/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 410 created: 2008/12/31 04:00:49 created_gmt: 2008/12/31 04:00:49 comment_status: open post_name: skype-brings-families-together status: publish post_type: post

Skype brings families together

Really. It does. Well, at least it can help. We did some web calls with the family on Christmas. For the most part the video was good, but at points the audio got really choppy. Only drawback was that video conferencing between more than two machines isn’t supported yet.

Setting up Skype should be as easy as downloading the installer, whether for Windows or Linux, setting up an account and making a call. The bad news is, it isn’t. The good news is that it isn’t all that hard either.

First, the prereqs. The 32-bit libraries for Video4Linux, lib32v4l-0, are required as not part of the base 64-bit distro (if you’re running 32-bit, they should be there already).

Next, you’ll need two packages from MediaBuntu, the arch-independent [skype-common](http://packages.medibuntu.org/intrepid/skype-common.html) and architecture-specific version of the main [skype](http://packages.medibuntu.org/intrepid/skype.html) client.

While the Skype supplied packages worked fine on 8.04, they partially failed under 8.10 — being unable to interface correctly with video from my Logitech Communicator STX. The basic problem was Skype’s reliance on an older v4l library. The MediaBuntu packages solved that by patching the original code so it works with the newer library. As a result of this positive experience, I’ve added MediaBuntu to the list of repos my system queries, following the community documentation on how to do it. At this point the latest Ubuntu doc for Skype does not address the issues I found, and so needs some updating.

Even with the new package, I found getting both my webcam (a Logitech Communicator STX) and it’s built-in microphone to work a little challenging the first time around. One indispensable tool to help get things properly set up on my platform was Jean-Baptiste Th

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