Installing skype on Debian Unstable amd64

Installing skype on 64bit linux is easy but how to do it is hard to find on the skype site. Here is what you need to do.

In this case I will show how to install skype on Debian GNU/Linux Unstable amd64. First download the skype package from skype.com - Skype for Debian 7.0 (multiarch).

Install it with the following command:

# dpkg -i --force-all skype-debian_4.1.0.20-1_i386.deb

Now you have installed skype but it will not work because of missing libraries. You can see what is missing with the following command:

# ldd `which skype`
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xf7793000)
        libasound.so.2 => not found

        libXv.so.1 => not found

        libXss.so.1 => not found

        librt.so.1 => /lib32/librt.so.1 (0xf776d000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib32/libdl.so.2 (0xf7769000)
        libX11.so.6 => not found

        libXext.so.6 => not found

        libQtDBus.so.4 => not found

        libQtWebKit.so.4 => not found

        libQtXml.so.4 => not found

        libQtGui.so.4 => not found

        libQtNetwork.so.4 => not found

        libQtCore.so.4 => not found

        libpthread.so.0 => /lib32/libpthread.so.0 (0xf774e000)
        libstdc++.so.6 => not found
        libm.so.6 => /lib32/libm.so.6 (0xf7727000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib32/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xf770a000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib32/libc.so.6 (0xf75a8000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xf7794000)

As we see there are missing libs and this happens because skype deb package is build for i386 arch and we have amd64.

We need to add another architecture to apt with the following command:

# dpkg --add-architecture i386
# apt-get update

Now we can install missing libs:

# apt-get -f install

This will download and install missing i386 libs. Now you can start skype.

Note: You can install any package by adding :i386 or :amd64 after the package name: apt-get install  tcpdump:i386