@moesasji,

yes, I compiled apulse from source, no surprises there.
no, nothing is displayed on the terminal after "apulse skype".

I have noticed, though, that if I try to directly start skype.4.3 it complains about a missing PulseAudio library from version 5.0 (libpulse.5.0 or something like that, I'm not in front of the terminal right now).

For completeness I'm stating that I'm working on a 32bit 14.0 Slackware, *not* a 64bit one.

Does this ring a bell to anyone?

Unfortunately I can't help. The only thing I can say is that the above thing you mention is expected behavior. When you run "apulse skype" the apulse command provides the compatibility layer that provides the equivalent of the pulseaudio libraries. So if you run skype directly that layer is obviously missing.

If I have time tonight, I'll set up a 32bit 14.0 VM and try to look into it. In the meantime try to inspect strace output.

SOLVED.
Turns out the problem was from my pre-Skype.4.3 config directory. Once I removed that, all was fine.

@fsLeg, thanx for pointing out using 'strace'. This cued me in.

So, to summarize, using 'apulse skype' on a pure 32bit Slackware.14.0 system works like a charm for Skype.4.3.

Thanx to all.

I usually like to run Skype in some kind of sandbox like a chroot jail or by using the sandfox script.

I don't know if that is still possible with apulse since that would mean the addition of an extra layer wrapped around the Skype process.

Any idea on how to perform such a thing ?

I don't really like how Skype likes the ~/.mozilla directory...

Not quite. It works fine on my 32-bit netbook.

However, on my 64-bit PC I get:
(yes I did compile apulse using COMPAT32=yes sh apulse.SlackBuild)

I found out a few things about apulse.

1. It was written for the sole purpose of having sound in Skype-4.3 without having to install PulseAudio.
2. Once the first item was achieved, the development stopped. There won't be any new features, only occasional small bugfixes.
3. The above means that running apulse with anything other than Skype-4.3 is unsupported and most likely won't work. For example, it is reported to not work with Steam and even Skype-4.2.

If interested, I found the above information here (WARNING: Russian website, lots of flame and hate).

I think there was no point in creating an "official" SlackBuild for it. Instead it should be bundled with Skype's SlackBuild as an option (like APULSE=yes). Also there's no point in building 64bit libraries since Skype is 32bit only.

I suggest you reporting this directly to the developer via the project's github page.

The Steam package made by AlienBob runs flawlessly without PulseAudio.

Built-in videos of the Steam client do have sound, so do the games launched from Steam.

Even the Big Picture mode of Steam works without PulseAudio.

Just install the OpenAL package provided by Alienbob and you will be set.

Not sure why you would want PulseAudio, if Steam is the only thing that bother you

Did just that.

It does not. I just don't know any other applications that might want to use PA. Also I remember a comment from G+ about wondering if XCOM could use apulse, so I thought that some Steam games might only use PA for their sound output.

It looks like Microsoft has finally intervened - Skype 4.2 with a spoofed version number can no longer log on to the Skype network.

The 4.3 SlackBuild one post above me works like a charme - it's nice to see that there's always a way around annoying software from Poettering

This seems interesting

I couldn't compile it because I don't have multilib

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Cool thanks for that slackbuild. too bad it probably won't get in SBo.

I ditched skype altogether now.
Though i know quite a few people who use it with apulse and its working like a charm.

As for steam doesn't that bundle its own copy of pulseaudio anyway?

To isolate Skype 4.3 from the other files in $HOME, README.SLACKWARE proposes to create specific user and group and use sudo.

Another way is to just create another "real" user with a specific $HOME belonging to the group users, and use "su - $user" to change identity. That works here™. FWIW YMMV and all.

1 members found this post helpful.

Didier, you just answered my question

Thanks you.

Meh at this time, I wish Skype could be killed with fire just like MSN/Windows Live Messenger.

I use a XMPP chat to stay in touch with most of my relatives but a significant part of them are still using Skype.

That's just the common problem of a software reaching its critical mass of end users so...

Hi,
I've compiled apulse on my Slackware64-current without any particular option and then installed the Skype distribution repackaged using the Sbo script.
Skype starts well but I have no sound played no recorded.
In options, for sound, everything is set up to "Virtual device", so my guess is that I need to pass some information to apulse to make it use the proper card.
Indeed, I have a terrible HDA sound card that provide a "digital card" as first and the proper "Analog" card as second device :

I managed to make most of my programs work by forcing the default to card 1, but could not find yet the way to do so with apulse.
I tried this :

APULSE_CAPTURE_DEVICE="hw:1,0" APULSE_PLAYBACK_DEVICE="hw:1,0" apulse skype &

But no luck yet. If anyone has a solution, I would be grateful.
Is it necessary to use a pulseaudio-like conf file?

EDIT : Well actually, it worked, I just needed to set APULSE_CAPTURE_DEVICE to "hw:2,0" and not stupidly to "1,0".
It actually works pretty well apparently and is really quite easy to set up. Just make sure apulse is compiled in 32bits on a multilib system.