Skype for Linux and OSX

Skype is by far the best voice-over-ip client I know. It even works well with NAT firewalls (how do they do that?!) Now there is also a Linux and OSX version available.

I found some packages for Debian. Just add these lines to your sources.list:

…and then do the usual “apt-get update; apt-get install skype”.

Unfortunately it does not work with proxies yet.


deb http://www.bootsplash.de/files/debian unstable main
deb-src http://www.bootsplash.de/files/debian unstable main

2. September 2004 | collaboration

Anton Tagunov

> how do they do that?!

Perhaps if one party is behind NAT but not the other the behind NAT party may initiate the session.

If both are behind they they choose some other poor person's skype (so that those person is not behind firewall) and they both connect to him. He pumps the data for them. (Since there should be some central registry of users online like in ICQ it should be possible to find such poor soul.)

Not a big problem for US, but a HUGE problem for Russia where close to nobody has unlimited traffic. (I mean, we all pay for traffic, for megabytes). This in fact makes skype almost unusable in Russia. The price to pay for the convenience.

Torsten Curdt’s weblog

Skype for Linux and OSX