How To Install Skype on CentOS 7

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configuration of Skype on your CentOS 7.  For those of you who didn’t know, Skype is a very popular communication software. Skype can be used for audio and video communication as well as text. You can also call a landline for a small cost via skype. Skype also offers some rich features like voice mail, video chat, instant messaging, call forwarding, conference calling, and many more.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Skype on a CentOS 7 server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 7.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Skype on CentOS 7

Step 1. First, you need to enable the EPEL repository and Nux Desktop repository on your system.

yum -y install epel-release
rpm -Uvh http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/el7/x86_64/nux-dextop-release-0-5.el7.nux.noarch.rpm
yum -y update

Step 2. Installing Skype.

Run the following command and install the prerequisites for Skype and when promoted just Press Y and Enter to continue installing:

yum install alsa-lib.i686 libXv.i686 libXScrnSaver.i686 libcanberra.i686 libcanberra-gtk2.i686 pulseaudio-libs.i686 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686 qt-4.8.5-8.el7.i686 qtwebkit-2.3.3-3.el7.i686

Download the skype archive file package, At the moment of writing this article it is version 4.3:

wget http://download.skype.com/linux/skype-4.3.0.37.tar.bz2
tar -jxvf skype-4.3.0.37.tar.bz2

Create Launcher for skype:

touch /usr/bin/skype
chmod 755 /usr/bin/skype

Open the file /usr/bin/skype with your choice of editor and place the following line of code and save it:

###nano /usr/bin/skype

#!/bin/sh
export SKYPE_HOME="/opt/skype-4.3.0.37"
$SKYPE_HOME/skype --resources=$SKYPE_HOME $*

Create a few necessary symbolic links:

ln -s /opt/skype-4.3.0.37/icons/SkypeBlue_48x48.png /usr/share/icons/skype.png
ln -s /opt/skype-4.3.0.37/icons/SkypeBlue_48x48.png /usr/share/pixmaps/skype.png
ln -s /opt/skype-4.3.0.37/skype.desktop /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop
ln -s /opt/skype-4.3.0.37/sounds/ /usr/share/sounds/
ln -s /opt/skype-4.3.0.37/lang/ /usr/share/lang/

Step 3. Accessing Skype.

After the installation you can start skype either from the command line using the skype command:

skype

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Skype. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Skype on your CentOS 7 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Skype website.