I’m not a ‘heavy’ Skype user but I do use it from time to time. And my recently installed openSUSE 12.2 doesn’t come with Skype by default, so I had to install it manually (which is pretty darn easy) and the installation went quite smoothly. And I thought I’d share the steps that I followed which would help out anyone new to all this.
As far as I know, Skype package is not hosted in openSUSE repositories but the official Skype website gives pre-built packages for few popular distributions including openSUSE.
However there are no 64-bit versions for the openSUSE distribution (that’s what I’m using, with the KDE desktop) plus the current package is only for the 12.1 version not the 12.2. But that 32-bit package worked like a charm on the 12.2 :).
Step 1: Go to this Skype for Linux download page and hoover your mouse over the Download now button. Then from drop-down menu that you get, choose ‘openSUSE 12.1 32-bit’ (if you have your version listed then please select that).
Step 2: Then once it’s downloaded you can install it using two methods. You can use the awesome ‘zypper’ command-line package manager or use the ‘Apper installer’, a more user friendly software installer GUI. But I’ll laid out the GUI method first.
Method A: Go to the downloaded location (usually the ‘Downloads’ folder in your ‘Home’), select and right click on the Skype package, and from the menu navigate to: ‘Open With’ -> ‘Apper Installer’ (as shown below).
Then simply follow the on-screen instructions to install it.
Method B: If you’ve decided to go with ‘command-line way’ (yikes! :D) rather than the above GUI tool then again once the downloading complete, put the below command in your Terminal.
dir Downloads
This will show a list of all the files and folders inside the ‘Downloads’ folder. Look for the newly downloaded Skype package. Use your mouse to select and copy its name.
Then enter the below command and press enter.
sudo zypper install Downloads/skype-4.0.0.8-suse.i586.rpm
For the future users: You will have to ‘skype-4.0.0.8-suse.i586.rpm‘ with the name of your downloaded Skype package’s name if the one that you have downloaded is a new version. Then once asked, enter your password and within few minutes ‘zypper’ will do the rest for you.
Then you can search for it in the start-menu and when you launch for the first time, it’ll ask you to agree to their terms and as soon as you do that, you’ll be able to start using it. That’s it, now you should have successfully installed Skype on openSUSE 12.2!.
