Installing Skype at Debian 7 'Wheezy' for AMD64 architecture

Hi all,

About a month ago Debian Community released the long-awaited Debian 7 'Wheezy':
http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504

It includes a lot of new features. The most notable, of course, is GNOME 3 user interface. It's amazing!

GNOME 3 Screenshot

Skype at Debian 7

Most of the user computers now are 64-bit machines (usually everything works fine with AMD64 version). But Skype provides binaries only for 32-bit architecture (i386). Fortunately, Milti-Arch support at Debian solves this problem!

Debian Wiki page about Skype ( http://wiki.debian.org/skype ) is written in a too complicated way. It took me a while to understand: what is connected to what?

To simplify Debian users' life, here is the

Step by step installation manual

Install Debian 7 'Wheezy' (I'm using AMD64 version). Straight forward process: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ . Nothing special.

After finishing installation, open Terminal (in GNOME 3: Activities -> Applications -> Terminal).

Log in as root:
$ su -l
If you disabled root login during the installation process, you may run $ sudo bash OR insert sudo in front of the following commands.

Now add the new architecture i386:
# dpkg --add-architecture i386
# aptitude clean && aptitude update

Install libpulse:
# aptitude install libpulse0 libpulse0:i386

Then, download Skype:
# wget -O skype-install.deb http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-deb

WARNING: Fork: Here this manual way diverges from presented one at Debian Wiki!

Install Skype dependencies:
# dpkg-deb --field skype-install.deb Depends
# aptitude install <every package from the dpkg-deb output, adding :i386 suffix>

Closing the finish line, install Skype itself:
# dpkg --install skype-install.deb

The last thing to do is to enable "[x] Check for update on startup" in the ‘Advanced’ tab of the options menu in Skype. In this case Skype will notify you about new versions.

That's all! :) Enjoy!