andrejazanov October 21, 2014 at 11:27

How to cook Skype-4.3 for Linux correctly

From the sandbox

The latest voluntary forced update of the Skype program among its users caused a whole gamut of feelings - from perplexity to indignation. Especially, the problem has affected the Linux community. Rather, that part of it that uses the ALSA sound subsystem.

This is due to the fact that Microsoft for some reason decided that the only right way is to use PulseAudio, thereby leaving no alternative to a huge number of those who for some reason do not use this sound server.

I am among those who do not see the point in using PulseAudio with normally working ALSA and I don’t have the desire to reconfigure the entire audio subsystem to please Skype.

We’ll leave out the whole quest that I had to go through in search of a solution, how to make the previous version work stably and what to do with the suddenly numbed new Skype. The solution, as always, was simple to the ridiculous. Here I will give a brief guide on how to make fresh Skype work correctly.

First, some general information.
When it became clear that it would not work to get Skype-4.2 working without failures, I focused on solving the sound problem in Skype-4.3

. In everyday life I use Gentoo Linux, then for me it is common to use USE flags when building packages. Therefore, I paid attention to the USE flag apulse. A little google, I found out that this is a PulseAudio sound server API emulator via ALSA. Just what I needed.

Then it was simple:

Put apulse
Arecord detects a microphone device
The configuration file ~ / .asoundrc is written
Skype is set with the apulse flag enabled
Enjoy

All items except 3 and 5 are run as root.
Points 2 and 3 were necessary for me, because My microphone is built into the webcam. Those who use a headset connected to a sound card can probably skip these points.

Now the same thing, but for the Gentoo Linux system:

We put apulse

~ # emerge -av apulse
These are the packages that would be merged, in order:
Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild   R   ~] media-sound/apulse-0.1.2  ABI_X86="32 (64) (-x32)" 0 KiB
Total: 1 package (1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 0 KiB
Would you like to merge these packages? [Yes/No]

We look at the list of devices for capturing sound

~ # arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC887 Analog [ALC887 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 2: ALC887 Alt Analog [ALC887 Alt Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: C920 [HD Pro Webcam C920], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Please note - the microphone is in card 2, device 0. This will be reflected in the configuration file

This file must be created under your account

~ $ nano ~/.asoundrc 
pcm.!default {
         type asym
         playback.pcm {
                 type plug
                 slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
         }
         capture.pcm {
                 type plug
                 slave.pcm "hw:2,0"
         } 
 }

Install Skype

~ # emerge -av skype
These are the packages that would be merged, in order:
Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild   R   ~] net-im/skype-4.3.0.37-r1  USE="apulse -pax_kernel -pulseaudio (-selinux)" 0 KiB
Total: 1 package (1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 0 KiB
Would you like to merge these packages? [Yes/No]

We launch Skype and enjoy impeccably clear sound, as the advertisement for this product says.

That's all.

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How to cook Skype-4.3 for Linux correctly

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