Pulseaudio 2.0 built without support for udev, dbus, and POSIX capabilities:
--disable-hal --disable-udev --disable-dbus --without-caps
If launched before Skype from a separate console, without parameters - works perfectly well (through its builtin ALSA plugin, in default configuration) on any Slackware version since 13.0. And even on 12.2 after adding/upgrading some libs.

2 members found this post helpful.

You mean that this will work for Skype 4.3?

I mean that this presently is working with Skype 4.3 on several machines, with different systems: Slackware 14.0, 13.0, and yes, even 12.2 (such is the menagerie that I have to maintain).

Hello kentandre, maybe this is the reason because I tested with another distro (Lubuntu)
and got skype 4.3 aborted too. My CPU is a K7 (old ). I think K8 doesn't have this problem.

But I can login into Skype with XP, this is strange.
Maybe in the next Skype updates they will block XP installation or connection,
since XP has reached end of life.

Underrated album

I used ekiga in the past to make international phone calls but it gave me problems time to time.

I've installed linphone from slackbuilds and I like it. Few dependencies, clean interface. I haven't tried it in video conference, with phone calls it works nicely. You only must to pay attention to add the correct server address entries, some servers need the "sip." prefix, some doesn't. Some times the configuration wizard add bad entries to ~/.linphonerc, you may edit this file manually. Once you've got the trick it works like a charm.

Try it.

Greetz
Just thought I'd mention that it seems that most people who have problems with Alsa and Skype (and think they require PulseAudio) do so because they have some generic sound chip instead of a real sound card. Real sound cards have internal hardware/software mixing and do not require the OpSys to provide it/them.

Did you actually try calling with Skype 4.3? It is now linked to PulseAudio exclusively and direct ALSA output support has been removed. That has nothing to do with the hardware.

Eric

Some success!!!!!!

This is is at least an existence proof of Skype 4.3 working on a Slackware based distro.
I have managed to get Skype 4.3 to run on Porteus 3.0.1 (32 bit). This is the list of modules that seem to be required:

alsa-lib-1.0.27.2-i486-1.xzm
gst-plugins-base-0.10.36-i486-2.xzm
gstreamer-0.10.36-i486-2.xzm
libfftw3f-3.3.3-alt2.i586.xzm
libjack-1.9.7-alt1.1.i586.xzm
libjson-c-0.12-alt1.i586.xzm
liborc-0.4.19-alt1.i586.xzm
libtdb-1.3.0-alt2.i586.xzm
pavucontrol-2.0-alt3.i586.xzm
pulseaudio-5.0-i486-1dj.xzm
skype-4.3.0.37-i486-1dj.xzm

Most of these I obtained as rpm's at pkgs.org and converted to xzm for Porteus. The skype-4.3.0.37 module is available on Slackel.

I have successfully made skype test calls and called outside (non-Skype) numbers). I have not tested video. Other sound on my system seems to be working OK. I have not observed any problems with Libreoffice.
Note you may need to create a configuration module in /home/guest/.config/pulse/.... I just played with pavucontrol until I got something I liked and then made a module out of it.

I am certain this can be improved upon but it seems usable for now.


sci_fi

That is a lot of self-inflicted pain.
As for running Skype 4.3 on Slackware, a cut-down build of Pulseaudio 2.0 is quite enough. As I said above.

The buildscript is from here: http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14...io/pulseaudio/ with "--disable-hal --disable-udev --disable-dbus --without-caps" then added to ./configure options. The required dependencies are json-c and speex, as the page says. Skype is launched with "pulseaudio --start ; sleep 2 ; skype". It works.

4 members found this post helpful.

Thanks, wjaguar.

I knew there had to be a better way. Much appreciated.

sci_fi

Has somebody built a tarball for the new version of skype for slackware64 including all its dependencies?

This must look all right for more experienced users but for a learner like me more detailed steps/commands would be of great help.

If I follow these instructions http://slackbuilds.org/howto/ is this the correct command followed by ?

Also this is quite unclear to me because by now after the command things usually get to work. At what time exactly this comes in?

Skype 4.3 works after installing pulse audio (64 and 32 bits).
However, it is pretty ugly in my XFCE (XFCE theme).
Screenshot in the attachments.

Changing the theme to adwaita makes skype look normal.
My guess is that skype uses GTK3 themes.

Does anyone have a trick, tips or solution?

Attached Thumbnails

 

Skype uses QT4.
Since it is a 32bit application, you need a compat32 version of your GTK engine. So, you can grab the 32bit package for your XFCE theme (I guess it's this one, but you know best) and convert it as follows:

convertpkg-compat32 -i gtk-xfce-engine-3.0.1-i486-1.txz -e tgz

The compat32 package should be placed in /tmp. Install it and see if it changes things.

Also, to make QT4 applications use the current GTK theme, add these in your /etc/profile.d/qt4.sh:

GTK2_RC_FILES="$HOME/.gtkrc-2.0:/etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"
export GTK2_RC_FILES

you should log off and back in for it to take effect. More info at AlienBob's.