Note

This info is no longer relevant. Right now Skype has been rewritten using electron and installing it in a debian based system is no longer a problem. Right now it doesn't support screensharing and some other features a normal person would expect.

Some alternatives I recommend:

• appear.in

• tox

• hangouts

• discord

If you really need to install this software, and you cannot use the alternatives, then this guide is for you.

I got tired of installing skype so many times looking all over the internet, so I'll leave here some easy steps to make it work in Debian Stretch with GNOME 3.21 (and may be some earlier versions). It's just that there is not enough information around. Debian recommends to install the .deb package, but it usually does not work.

As you probably know, skype is a 32bit software, so we'll need to enable that in our repository manager. Next we'll install some dependencies and finally we'll get the file in the specified folder.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get install libxv1:i386 libqtdbus4:i386 libqtwebkit4:i386 libxss1:i386
mkdir ~/.apps/
wget -qO- https://download.skype.com/linux/skype-4.3.0.37.tar.bz2 | tar jx -C ~/.apps/

Instead of launching the ./skype script, you can add a skype.desktop file to your gnome environment.

The location for this file is either ~/.local/share/applications, for the current user, or /usr/share/applications for everyone.

The content for your skype.desktop, should be something like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Skype
Comment=Skype Internet Telephony
Exec=/home/**santiago**/.apps/skype-4.3.0.37/skype
Icon=/home/**santiago**/.apps/skype-4.3.0.37/icons/SkypeBlue_96x96.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Categories=Network;Application;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/skype;
X-KDE-Protocols=skype
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=skype

PS: Remember to change the user for the one you are using.

Good luck!