If you've managed to get audio and video working under Linux, Microsoft's latest Skype-for-Linux will let you place video calls.

An alternative view is that Microsoft is taking the next step in eliminating the peer-to-peer history that made Skype popular in the first place.

The company's dropped Skype 1.10 for Linux Alpha here.

The new version of the software offers an experimental version of video calling (look, jokes aside, can it really be this hard?), and the video calls only work between Skype-for-Linux Alpha clients at this stage.

Versions from Skype for Linux 1.1 to 1.6 are being disabled, which doesn't look hard to do given Microsoft's shift away from Skype's old P2P architecture: all Redmond has to do is tell its cloudy servers to ignore logins from old versions.

But something's gumming up the logon works at Skype, as last week the service was unable to log in some users. The Reg has even seen reports from irate users whose accounts disappeared entirely, for a time.

We are looking into some issues affecting logging in to Skype, and hope to resolve it as soon as possible. Stay tuned for an update. — Skype Support (@SkypeSupport) October 6, 2016

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