How to get Skype 2.1 working with your webcam on Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 32/64bit

So I recently tried to install skype on my new Ubuntu Installation as I found out that skype wasn't available anymore in the medibuntu repositories for Karmic. So I installed the official deb package for Ubuntu 8.04 from the official skype website. All just seemed to be working fine, but after a while I wanted to see if my webcam was working as it should, which it didn't. When I went to Options in Skype and wanted to test my Videodevice, all I got was just a green snowy screen (see screenshot).

I was sure that my webcam was working after trying in out using, ** gstreamer-properties**. So I googled a little bit around until I found this post. As it seems although you've downloaded the skype 64bit version from the official skype website, that skype version wants 32bit video4linux libs. (Strange??? I know).

For a 64bit system we'll have to use lib32v4l-0 so check if you have them installed. Now all we need to do is point the library to a system variable called LD_PRELOAD. The simplest way to do this is to create a small bash script in*/usr/bin/* which is called skype.start. Once you've created the file don't forget making it executable with chmod +x /usr/bin/skype.start.

64 bit system

#!/bin/bash
env LD\_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype

32 bit system

#!/bin/bash
env LD\_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype

Now start skype using /usr/bin/skype.start and you should end up with your webcam working. Hope this was helpful.