linux Skype 4.0 released

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Skype 4.0 for Linux

First off, we'd like to thank our Skype for Linux users for your patience awaiting Skype 4.0 for Linux, codenamed 'Four Rooms for Improvement,' which is now available. With this release, we have finally filled the gap with our other desktop clients and we are now making many of the latest Skype features, as well as a lot of UI improvements, available to our penguin lovers.

You will find four major changes in this release:

1. We have a new Conversations View where users can easily track all of their chats in a unified window. Those users who prefer the old view can disable this in the Chat options;
   
2. We have a brand new Call View;
   
3. Call quality has never been better thanks to several investments we made in improving audio quality; and
   
4. We've worked on improving video call quality and have also extended support for more cameras.
   

Of course, we have loads of other small improvements and fixes. As you can imagine, the list is so long it would take too much time to write it all, but some are worthy of mention:

• improved chat synchronization
  
• new presence and emoticon icons
  
• the ability to store and view phone numbers in a Skype contact's profile
  
• much lower chance Skype for Linux will crash or freeze
  
• chat history loading is now much faster
  
• support for two new languages: Czech (flag:cz) and Norwegian (flag:no)
  

Note, the very first time you start Skype for Linux 4.0 might take a few minutes (depending on how lengthy your chat history is). Please do not close Skype during this time. Subsequent starts will load much more quickly.

So what are you waiting for? Try the new version of Skype for Linux and let us know what you like and what you don't like. Please report any issues or share your feedback in our Support Network or our public issue tracker so we can make the Skype for Linux experience even better.

Marco, KC and the Linux team

Source: Skype Linux blog

Download: Skype 4.0 for Linux

[ShMaunder]

Its a welcome release and looks better!

Though as I stated in the Windows release thread, IMO you'll need to run skype-wrapper for it to work correctly in Ubuntu's Unity (skype-wrapper is a python script that integrates it into the OS' native notification system).

[Brandon H Supervisor]

this is good news indeed, I know a lot of people were worried that now that microsoft owns skype that the linux version was going to be killed off

glad to see this didn't end up happening :)

[Syanide]

Great news, kudos to the dev team and MS for not axing it.