Skype video call improvements

Microsoft just released a major upgrade to their Skype for Linux client, taking it from “alpha” to “beta” status, and the new version is now available for update via the Endless app center.

See https://blogs.skype.com/news/2017/03/01/the-skype-for-linux-beta-version-5-0-is-now-available-for-download/.

One of the most noticeable improvements is that you can now make 1-to-1 video calls to Skype users on Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac. Previously, with the alpha version, you could only make video calls to other Linux users.

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@roddy I don’t know if Skype has a flatpak available at current. And it could be hard to get one at that from my understanding how Microsoft work.

@Benjamin-Saul Although Microsoft does not provide a flatpak directly, Endless provides access to Skype via an “external flatpak” mechanism. When you install the Skype flatpak from the Endless app center, the Skype binary package is downloaded from Microsoft and unpacked into an “extra” subdirectory within the flatpak’s directory tree. The Endless team monitors for updates from Microsoft, and once we verify that it works (making any necessary modifications to our external flatpak configuration), we publish an update to the external flatpak that points to the new version from Microsoft. Then, when a user updates the Skype application via the app center, the new version from Microsoft is downloaded and unpacked.

For what it’s worth, we use a similar mechanism for Google Chrome, Dropbox, and Spotify. And, we would be thrilled if these companies would provide a flatpak directly so that we could get out of the middle of the upgrade process.

Roddy

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@roddy
:clap: :clap: :clap:

Thanks @roddy, that makes a lot of senses. I was wondering myself how you get around software not having a flatpak available.

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