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Installing SKYPE on RHEL/CentOS

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Skype is famous app that is used for instant messaging & making video calls online. We
can also share pictures, videos, text files etc over skype. Skype also supports video
conferencing calls. In this tutorial, we are going to install Skype on our RHEL/CentOS 7
servers.

We will be using two methods to install skpye on our system,

1. Using rpm file
2. Using source file

Using RPM file

This method is the simplest of the two methods and have been tested on both
RHEL/CentOS 7 . This method requires us to download the rpm file & install it. But
before installing skype rpm, we need to remove some of the dependencies for the skpye
package.
To remove dependencies for the rpm package , run
$ yum install http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/el7/x86_64/qtwebkit-2.3.3-
3.el7.i686.rpm

This will install all the dependencies, now we will install the skype package by running,
$ yum install http://download.skype.com/linux/skype-4.3.0.37-fedora.i586.rpm

This command will download and install the skype package. To run skype on the
machine, run following command in the terminal,
$ skype

When running first time, this command will launch a windows where you need to
approve the terms & conditions, after which you will asked for your skype id and
password.
Using source file
This method is a bit difficult & requires you to compile the package from the source
code but its useful in cases where the above method does not work. Firstly remove all
the dependencies that are required by skype, by running,
$ yum install libXv.i686 libstdc++.i686 pulseaudio-libs.i686 qt.i686 qt-x11.i686 qtwebkit.i686
alsa-lib.i686 fontconfig.i686 freetype.i686 glib2.i686 libSM.i686 libXScrnSaver.i686 libXi.i686
libXrandr.i686 libXrender.i686 zlib.i686

Once installed, we will now download & extract the source file of skype,
cd /usr/src
wget http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-dynamic
tar -xvf skype*
mv skype* skype

We now need to create a launch file for the skype with the following content,
$ vi /usr/bin/skype
#!/bin/sh
export SKYPE_HOME=/usr/src/skype
$SKYPE_HOME/skype resources=$SKYPE_HOME $*

Also provide the launch file with the execute permissions,

$ chmod +x
/usr/bin/skype

Lastly we need to create some important symbolic links for the files,
ln -s /usr/src/skype/icons/SkypeBlue_48x48.png
/usr/share/icons/skype.png
ln -s /usr/src/skype/icons/SkypeBlue_48x48.png
/usr/share/pixmaps/skype.png
ln -s /usr/src/skype/skype.desktop
/usr/share/applications/skype.desktop
cp /usr/src/skype/sounds/* /usr/share/sounds/
cp /usr/src/skype/lang/* /usr/share/lang/
After making all these changes, we can now use our software by opening terminal &
typing
$ skype

This concludes our tutorial on installing skype on CentOS/RHEL 7 machine. Please feel
free to mention any query in the comment box below.

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