Fixing Skype Error in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

Since Ubuntu 10.10 Skype always available in every ubuntu official repository, even though there are always a choice for ubuntu user to download Skype from its official website, it's better for us to install Skype from a repository because it's has been adjusted with every Ubuntu release.

In this release, Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric has Improved handling of 32-bit compatibility on amd64 systems, in other word this mean `some package` may use a same library for 32-bit and 64-bit. 32-bit libraries will always be available at the same time as their 64-bit counterparts, even in the case of security updates, and users will only need to install those 32-bit libraries needed by the applications they have installed.

Problems that usually accour when Install Skype in Ubuntu 11.10, especially user who install from standalone installer from Skype website (*.deb), is give following error message :

skype: error while loading shared libraries: libXss.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

a problem above usually because the unavailability of libXss.so because it is not available in 64-bit, to solve the problem above can be done in two ways, here are :


Installing the Right Skype Package
as I wrote above, we suggest you to install skype from ubuntu repository because it's has been adjusted with every ubuntu release, But if you've installed it, you can uninstall the skype first and install the right skype package, do as below :

• echo foreign-architecture i386 | sudo tee /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch
• $ sudo apt-get remove --purge skype
• $ sudo apt-get install skype:i386

by adding prefix :i386 it will give you a right skype pakage. Using this way it must be fix skype error and your skype should be installed perfectly on your Ubuntu, hopefully.

Complete the Missing Package
Second way, besides of the way above you can just completing the Missing Package to  fix skype error in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric, however sometimes not work successfully, do as bellow :

• $ sudo apt-get install libxss1:i386
• $ sudo apt-get install libqt4-core:i386
• $ sudo apt-get install libqt4-gui:i386
• $ sudo apt-get install libdbus-1-3:i386

After doing some action above, don't forget to reboot your computer and run the Skype.

There is a good news, that in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Oncelot Skype will have an indicator in systray, so you can control skype easily from that applet.