Skype for Linux is No Longer Beta!

Official version 4.0 of Skype for Linux is available NOW!

From the Skype for Linux Blog:

“First off, we’d like to thank our Skype for Linux users for your patience awaiting Skype 4.0 for Linux, codenamed ‘Four Rooms for Improvement,’ which is now available. With this release, we have finally filled the gap with our other desktop clients and we are now making many of the latest Skype features, as well as a lot of UI improvements, available to our penguin lovers.

You will find four major changes in this release:

• We have a new Conversations View where users can easily track all of their chats in a unified window. Those users who prefer the old view can disable this in the Chat options;
• We have a brand new Call View;
• Call quality has never been better thanks to several investments we made in improving audio quality; and
• We’ve worked on improving video call quality and have also extended support for more cameras.

Of course, we have loads of other small improvements and fixes. As you can imagine, the list is so long it would take too much time to write it all, but some are worthy of mention:

• improved chat synchronization
• new presence and emoticon icons
• the ability to store and view phone numbers in a Skype contact’s profile
• much lower chance Skype for Linux will crash or freeze
• chat history loading is now much faster
• support for two new languages: Czech (flag:cz) and Norwegian (flag:no)

Note, the very first time you start Skype for Linux 4.0 might take a few minutes (depending on how lengthy your chat history is). Please do not close Skype during this time. Subsequent starts will load much more quickly.”