Skype is one of the most popular communication application developed by Microsoft. It allows for instant messaging and audio, video calls. Some other features of Skype include conference call, screen sharing, file sharing, and voice messaging.
Skype is not an open-source application and it is not available in the Debian package repositories. So, we will install it using snap and deb packages. In this article, we will explain how to install Skype on Debian 10 OS. You can use the same procedure in older versions of Debian.
We have used Debian 10 OS for describing the procedure mentioned in this article.
Skype Installation
We will install Skype through the Terminal by following a few and very simple commands. There are two options available for installing Skype application in Debian:
- Installing Skype using snap package
- Installing Skype using deb package
Install Skype using snap package
Launch the Terminal application in your system by going into the Activities tab in the top left corner of your desktop. Then in the search bar, type terminal. When the Terminal icon appears, click on it to launch it. Now in the Terminal, enter the following command in order to update the list of available packages:
$ sudo apt-get update
Since the Snap comes pre-installed latest versions of Debian, so we do not need to install it. However, If you are using an older version, then run the following to install Snap:
$ sudo apt-get install snapd
Now execute the following command in Terminal to install Skype Classic version:
$ sudo snap install skype –classic
Once the installation is completed, you can launch Skype from the Applications menu.
Install Skype using the deb package
We can also install Skype from the .deb package. The official website of Skype contains many packages for different operating system needs and specifications.
Step 1: Check if you have Debian 32-bit or 64-bit system
For Linux users, Skype is only available for 64 bit OS. Before going to install Skype, make sure to check your version of the operating system. Follow the below steps to do so:
1. Launch the Terminal application in your Debian OS.
2. Then run the following command in Terminal to obtain CPU details:
$ lscpu
This command will display the following output. The CPU op-mode(s) entry in the output reveals the version of Linux running on your system. If you see both 32-bit and 64-bit, then you have 64 bit version of OS. However, if you only see 32-bit, then it implies, you have 32-bit version of OS.
The output in the above screenshot shows our Debian version is 64 bit.
Step 2: Enable MutliArch for a 64-bit system
Next in this step, we will enable multiarch. It will allow the system to achieve better compatibility for the software on your 64-bit Debian OS. Run the below command in Terminal to enable multiarch:
$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
Step 3: Download Skype .deb package from the Skype website
Go to Skype’s official downloads page and download the most recent version of Skype for your Linux OS. Alternatively, you can use the wget command-line utility to download the Skype package on your system. For that, open the Terminal and enter the following command:
$ wget https://repo.skype.com/latest/skypeforlinux-64.deb
The downloaded package will be saved in your current working directory.
Step 4: Install the downloaded package
Once the downloading of the Skype package is completed, the next step would be to install it. The downloaded setup of Skype is in .deb format, so we will have to install it using apt utility:
$ sudo apt install skypeforlinux-64.deb
It will ask for confirmation by providing with y/n option, enter y to confirm and to proceed with the installation. Once the installation is completed, you can launch Skype from the command line or the applications menu.
Now we have learned how to install Skype in Debian OS using two different methods in Terminal. We have seen that both the methods are simple and just involves a few commands. I hope it will help to get Skype installed on your Debian OS.