Installing Skype on 64-bit Fedora 14

[Christopher A. Williams]

On Fri, 2011-01-07 at 15:49 -0500, Sam Varshavchik wrote: 
> Andre Robatino writes:
> 
> > I install the skype RPM first, then try to run it. If I get an error complaining
> > about not finding libasound.so.2, I run "locate libasound.so.2" which locates
> > the corresponding 64-bit file (/lib64/libasound.so.2), then use "rpm -qf
> > /lib64/libasound.so.2" to find which package it belongs to (alsa-lib.x86_64),
> > then install the corresponding 32-bit package (alsa-lib.i686). Attempting to run
> > skype again, I'll get the same type of error with a different library, so I
> > repeat the process. After about a dozen iterations of this, it finally runs.
> > This would probably work just as well using commands such as "yum install
> > /lib/libasound.so.2" to let yum automatically identify the corresponding package.
> 
> This is a packaging error in skype's RPM.
> 
> If an rpm package is built properly, yum would be able to automatically 
> install all the prerequisites for you.
> 
> Just like it works with any other Fedora package. 32 bit or 64 bit.
> 

Actually, this is a long standing issue with Skype. In addition, their
Linux client is woefully behind the others in terms of function and
capabilities.

That said, there are a number of sources out there with instructions on
installing Skype on 64-bit F14.

Try (for example):
http://www.riccardoriva.com/archives/1091

The two key commands to get all of the dependencies - including sound -
are:

yum install -y qt-x11.i686 libXScrnSaver.i686
alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686

...and (to install Skype itself)

yum install --nogpgcheck -y skype-2.1.0.81-fc10.i586.rpm

Cheers,

Chris




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