The Final Skype on Ubuntu 9.04 Solution
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As we discussed previously, Skype on Ubuntu 8.10 is actually pretty straight forward. For some, there was confusion as to how to get it working with PulseAudio, but as I describe here, it’s actually really easy. Unfortunately as one of the commenters from the other article pointed out, with Ubuntu 9.04, things are a bit of a pita when using Skype as it comes to us from Skype.com.
As promised however, I did some testing on a very, very low-end box. We are talking mystery CPU (VIA or something like it) with as little RAM as 256MB of RAM. This PC I did the testing on is the single most duplicable POS one could possibly imagine. I keep it around as it helps me to make sure I am offering solutions that will work for most people.
Here is what I did my testing with and here are the results. Using Skype as we might get it from Skype.com did work “okay” with my pulseaudio settings as such.
- Sound in - Whatever Microphone I chose. For me, it was “USB Device” then some letters and numbers. This was my USB headset mic.
- Sound Out - Pulse
- Ringing - Pulse
Following my suggestions as seen on the above linked article for dealing with multiple sound cards (USB headset, etc), things worked well so long as I only had the main Skype window open. If ANYTHING else was open, I would either see audio issues as reported by Skype itself or it would crash when I tried to hang up a on a call. Nice, clearly this sucked big time.
After screaming at my PC for about 15 minutes, I decided to try something called skype-static. And from this, came the working solution I was looking for.
Before we get started, realize the following as I will only say this once.
- Before you do any of this, uninstall Skype COMPLETELY. This means skype-common, not just the Skype package.
- If you are one of those individuals who just spent the better part of a day following every hair-brained hack/scheme from the folks at the ubuntu forums and find this does not work - you’re on you own unless you use a fresh 9.04 installation. This method tested well on a FRESH install, not an updated one or one that has been “tweaked” to death. This said, you are welcome to try this anyway, but any failure had has been fully “disclaimer-ed”.
- See steps one and two again before asking me to help you.
Okay, let’s start this off, shall we?
- If you did what I asked above, this first step will be a very simple process with little more than copy and paste with your mouse.
- Once this is installed, use either the terminal or Synaptic and install skype-static. Not skype-static-oss, but the previous one. Vary from this, you are on your own as OSS sucks (my opinion) and I am not in a position to help you as I am an ALSA guy, not an OSS guy.
- Once this is installed, you should see Skype as an option in your Applications, Internet selection. Before starting the app, hookup your headsets, webcams, etc.
- Once #3 is done, start Skype and setup your audio as described above. The mic will take care of itself, but when using a headset and speakers…things can be a bit of a pain. In this article, I outline a couple of easy solutions that will make it possible for USB headset users to have things ring through on their speakers only to then take the call with their USB headsets. Webcam mic users will likely end up using speakers exclusively, so they may be unaffected.
- Webcam video using tradional Skype gives me this message with my QuickCam Communicate STX in 9.04 - via dmesg - process `skype’ is using obsolete setsockopt SO_BSDCOMPAT . But with skype-static, I instead see working video both in test calls and in the test area of the webcam configuration. In short, it tested working with two of my own Logitech webcams. They each use v4l2 standards.
24 Comments
Cliffystones
June 3rd, 2009
at 7:16am
It’s funny that I saw a link to you article on Lockergnome. I just installed Skype over the weekend.
The only “little inconvenience” I’m having to deal with is the damned camera “zooming-in” by itself as if possessed.
Googled the phenomena and found as many people blaming the Linux drivers as blaming Skype, without anyone having a clue as to what’s actually going on.
Before I try any of the other recommended “hacks” I will give your fix a try.
Matt Hartley
June 3rd, 2009
at 9:30am
Cliffy: Drivers are drivers for the webcams, skype would have nothing to do with it. To me, sounds like autofocus or auto zoom gone wild. Check for consistant lighting, make sure you do not have two things at once that the cam might be focused on. Also, what brand/model cam is doing this? I’ll do some checking once I know. In some cases, a simple config file edit might help.
joejoe
June 6th, 2009
at 7:05am
what repo do i enable to get skype-static? i’ve got just ’skype’. tho I’ve got all of the restricted, etc., repos enabled.
joejoe
June 6th, 2009
at 7:19am
yep. i’s a dummy. medibuntu repo, baby.
joejoe
June 6th, 2009
at 5:25pm
thanks for the skype-static option. skype now works for me in ubuntu 9.04! i shall report forthwith to the ubuntu forums and be everyone’s hero–at least for those who have skype issues and haven’t seen this article. oh, and i’ll be sending the love this way. :)
Matt Hartley
June 6th, 2009
at 6:32pm
JoeJoe: Happy you have things working. :)
Matt Hartley
June 8th, 2009
at 12:46pm
Attn John E.:
Hopefully you will see this as you have some email issues apparently. Received your email. Tried to respond only to have my response bounce back with a Invalid recipient error. Might need to check with Charter on this one…
antanukai
June 11th, 2009
at 9:03pm
Thank you for the solution.
Works perfectly.
Very simple.
Matt Hartley
June 11th, 2009
at 9:23pm
antanukai: Awesome, glad it is working for you. :)
Google Fails Yet Again With No Video Chat For Linux Users ~ Linux Fanatics
June 23rd, 2009
at 8:09pm
[...] The Final Skype on Ubuntu 9.04 SolutionSkype Me This One [...]
Sinclair
June 25th, 2009
at 1:54am
I am baffled at one thing: I can not get that menu bar and tabs you have on the screenshot! How did you ever manage? Am on (K)Ubuntu but doubt that makes any huge difference
Brian
June 29th, 2009
at 2:08pm
This got Skype working for me, but then I had problems with pulse–the audio was a bit choppy, and it seemed that Skype kept dropping and reconnecting with the pulse daemon (server? whatever it’s called). Then skype.real would crash and I’d get no audio at all, though my audio would go through to the person with whom I was connected. My webcam worked (works) fine.
Finally I got fed up and disabled pulse as described in:
http://idyllictux.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/ubuntu-904-jaunty-keeping-the-beast-pulseaudio-at-bay/
Dunno if it’s something specific to my Intel on-board audio, but now it’s working well! I can’t quite specify _exactly_ what I did after leaving pulse (may have been some ALSA configuration), but now all my sound devices in Skype are set to “Default” with no problems.
Marc
July 3rd, 2009
at 8:51am
i dont know how many days i tried to get skype workin with ubuntu… epic fail!
i worked through this guide, reinstalled 9.04 (32b) and followed the instructions closely but its the same situation as before, mic doesnt work. with some sound-in options n skype i hear nothin, with the most i get “problems with audio capture” with pulse skype breaks down completly when i hit the test call button. mic is defo not muted.
anyone any ideas / similar problems? btw, sound recorder doesnt work either, when i press record the timer runs at an abnormal speed and nothin is recorded.
hope anyone can help! thx in advance
joetopshot
July 5th, 2009
at 8:42am
Matt, *you’re* the man!! I played with skype for many hours on my 9.04 laptop (Toshiba Satellite A205-S5843). video was giving noise output; audio wasn’t working.
I carefully followed your instructions above. First thing I noticed was that the video worked! Audio didn’t. I then went to the gnome-sound-recorder and played with that a bit (after exiting skype). I got that working 100%. Skype’s audio still didn’t work with defaults. I then figured out which Skype settings matched those of the gnome-sound-recorder. Then EVERYTHING worked fine.
One question: my video is very dark. Is there some app that can fine tune the webcam driver settings? I’m using a Logitech something-or-another USB webcam (I can find the specifics, if that matters).
At any rate, thank you again, Matt.
Joe
Lex
July 6th, 2009
at 3:14am
I did the cut and past as suggested in this link, “very simple process ” and I think it all went well.
medibuntu is now in my list of repositories as is medibuntu code.
When I go to relaod my packages I get this message,
“W: GPG error: http://packages.medibuntu.org jaunty Release: The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 2EBC26B60C5A2783″.
Can you please advise me what to do now.
Also skype isn’t in my list of packages.
Thanks
Lex
Lex
July 6th, 2009
at 3:17am
Oh, mine is a fresh install of 9.04 64bit and this is the first skype howto I have followed.
Thanks again
Lex
Lucas
July 7th, 2009
at 12:17pm
Hello everybody.
I installed Skype by downloading the DEB package from the official website but either the headphones or the microphone didn’t work, so I decided to to what is proposed here.
After changing the default settings for audio in, audio out and ringing like is indicated here, the headphones worked, but not the microphone.
So I decided to try ALL the options available in the menu “Audio in”, but no of them work.
If somebody can help me I would be really grateful because I have tried a lot of things and it’s impossible to make this work.
Thank you everybody.
Harish
July 22nd, 2009
at 6:01am
Thanks for the suggestions.Thanks to you skype is working again for me :)
oziemike
July 26th, 2009
at 5:06am
Good, simple answer that works!! The answer certainly lays in using the skype-static version. With the standard skype install in 9.04 I was able to get it going reasonably well, but it was using 90% of the cpu the whole time skype was open. All is cool now.
philo
July 28th, 2009
at 11:54pm
just like to say ive had the same audio problems with skype and deffo the static version will work but as it says above u must un install any version currently installed, for the benefit of those who may not know i had to select hda intel (hw:intel,0) for correct audio input.
Ed
July 30th, 2009
at 11:31am
Just like sinclair (see comment june 25th above), I don’t see the menu bar either!
Does anyone have a clue what could be causing this?
Did get sound and mic working though on my 9.04 :-) Thanks for the article Matt!
teenz
August 8th, 2009
at 1:54am
Thanks Matt. It worked perfect except for the mic part. I had the error ‘error in Audio Capture’. I was able to fix it by pointing Sound in to my motherboard.
Matt Hartley
August 8th, 2009
at 5:34pm
Yeah, the failure to capture sound thing is fixable by doing that from “Sound”. But another approach is to set sound up with Alsa across the board. Then set the mic up in Skype settings to your motherboard mic (sometimes there are like three of them - just keep trying, you’ll get it).
Going to do a video on this as I think it is worthwhile to learn how to better juggle PulseAudio. It’s tricky, but TOTALLY awesome once you understand how to really use it. Blows not using Pulse out of the water, honestly. ;)
Maurizio Loiacono
August 20th, 2009
at 2:12pm
Hi,
I fixed the problem with microfone on UBUNTU 9.04 on HP COMPAQ nc6220 (32 bit).
1) Go: System/sound preference and set:
a) Device/Audio conferencing/OSS-Open Sound System
b) Default Mixer Tracks/Device/Intel ICH6 (Alsa Mixer)
2) Go: Open Volume Control/Device/Device/Intel ICH6 (Alsa Mixer)
3) Go: Open Volume Control/preferences/
a)select:
i)Master Playback
ii)PCM Playback
iii)Line Jack Sense Switches
iiii)Microphone capture Switches
4) Go on Skype Option/Sound Device
a) Sound In/Intel ICH6 (hw:ICH6,0)
b) Sound Out/Intel Pulse
c) Ringing/pulse
d)Do NOT flag “Allow Skype to automatically adjust mixer levels”
Just few notes. Generally speaking in point 3 you have to know the microphone capture is the channel to sample your voice at microphone. You have just one microphone on this laptop although you can use the external (with haedphone) or the internal one (integrated in your laptop). PCM is the PULSE mode to capture your voice (I assume). It is important you set at maximum level if you want to hear well. The Master playback is the control of Volume.
I hope this could help someone to not waste 6 hours how I did.
Maurizio