Install Skype 5 in Ubuntu 12.04

/ Yair Krauze

Skype ended support for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and its new packages have updated dependencies that are not met by this release.

To get around this issue, the following script will extract the deb package and reconfigure it for installation on a 12.04 release based system. Please be aware that the package may break or not work properly on your system. I make no guarantees for success. It does work for me.

You will also need to manually run the script to update Skype as new versions are released. The application will not be part of the system updates using apt.

Create the script, make it executable, and run it. Good luck!

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
#!/bin/bash
 
# Downloads latest skype release and makes it compatible with 12.04.
 
set -e
 
appname="skypeforlinux"
tmpDir=$(mktemp -d /tmp/deb.XXXXXXXXXX)
buildDir="$tmpDir/build"
debUrl="https://go.skype.com/skypeforlinux-64.deb"
debFile="$tmpDir/$appname-64.deb"
debFileModified="$tmpDir/$appname_modified.deb"
 
cleanup () {
  [[ -n "$tmpDir" ]] && [[ -d "$tmpDir" ]] && rm -r "$tmpDir"
}
 
trap "cleanup" EXIT
 
echo "Downloading latest release..."
mkdir -p "$buildDir"
wget "$debUrl" -O "$debFile" || exit 1
 
echo "Extracting original deb file..."
dpkg-deb -x "$debFile" "$buildDir"
dpkg-deb --control "$debFile" "$buildDir/DEBIAN"
 
echo "Updating dependencies..."
perl -pe 's|libnspr4 \(\>\= 2\:4\.9-2\~\)|libnspr4 \(\>\= 4\.12\)|g' "$buildDir/DEBIAN/control" > "$buildDir/DEBIAN/control.1"
perl -pe  's|libfontconfig1 \(\>\= 2\.11\)|libfontconfig1 \(\>\= 2\.8\.0\)|g' "$buildDir/DEBIAN/control.1" > "$buildDir/DEBIAN/control"
perl -pe  's|libpango-1\.0-0 \(\>\= 1\.14\.0\), libpangocairo-1\.0-0 \(\>\= 1\.14\.0\), libsecret-1-0 \(\>\= 0\.7\), ||g' "$buildDir/DEBIAN/control" > "$buildDir/DEBIAN/control.1"
mv "$buildDir/DEBIAN/control.1" "$buildDir/DEBIAN/control"
 
echo "Building new deb file..."
dpkg -b "$buildDir" "$debFileModified"
 
echo "Installing new version. Please enter your password:"
sudo dpkg -i "$debFileModified"