Skype 4.3 for Linux has been released today with an updated UI, cloud-based Group Chat experience, support for PulseAudio 3 and 4 and various other changes and bug fixes.

updated user interface (login window, the main window, options, etc. - see screenshots below);

new cloud-based Group Chat experience;

more reliable file transfer support when using multiple devices at once;

greater accessibility by blind and visually impaired users;

PulseAudio 3.0 and 4.0 support;

Lot of bug fixes.

It's also important to note that starting with Skype 4.3, the application no longer supports Alsa.

A thing I've noticed, which is not available in the official Skype 4.3 for Linux release announcement, is that starting with this version, Skype uses its own interactive notifications by default and in my test under Unity, they slightly overlap with the top panel:

There is an option to use the built-in system notifications, but you must manually enable it for each notification action, which is pretty annoying:

Also, some of the tray/indicator icons are now dark, which isn't exactly great news for Ubuntu, which uses dark indicator menus by default:

Download Skype 4.3 for Linux

The Skype package available in the official Ubuntu repositories should be updated to the latest Skype 4.3 version soon (I don't know exactly when).





If you want to install Skype right now, download the deb by using the link above (for Ubuntu 64bit, make sure you download the "Ubuntu 12.04 (multiarch)" package).





Then, before installing the newly downloaded Skype version, make sure you don't have Skype from the Ubuntu repositories installed, or else you won't be able to install the latest version downloaded from the Skype website - to do that (and remove Skype), simply use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove skype skype-bin:i386 skype:i386

And also, make sure sni-qt is installed and it's not marked for removal (so you don't lose the Skype AppIndicator) by using the following command:

sudo apt-get install sni-qt:i386

Then you'll be able to install the Skype 4.3 deb downloaded from the Skype website.