Andrew Allen wrote:
While I do not normally recommend using statically compiled binaries or installing programs that are not RPMS, in this case there is no real choice, other than breaking your system by upgrading qt ... which I would never recommend.
I can not make a "Redistributable" RPM, as Skype is not GPL ... so please don't ask :D
But, what you can do is download the Linux "Static" version:
http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-static
You can put it in any directory initially (you will want to save it, I personally put all non-RPM installed software in a directory under /root/ so that I know what is installed ... Then you need to untar the file like this (you need to be root to do this):
==================================== COMMANDS ==================================== tar -xvjf skype_static-<version>.tar.bz2
cd skype_static-<version>
mkdir /usr/share/skype
cp -a * /usr/share/skype/
cd /usr/share/skype/
mv skype /usr/bin/
mv skype.conf /etc/dbus-1/system.d/
chown <your-username>.<your-group> skype.desktop
mv skype.desktop ~<your-username>/Desktop
==================================== END COMMANDS ====================================
You should now see skype on your desktop, and you can right click the launcher and change the icon (pictures in /usr/share/skype/icons) now.
Thanks, Johnny Hughes
Thanks Johnny, I'll try installing skype the way you suggest - and thanks to others who've sent helpful replies. One question though - don't want to appear stupid, but what exactly is qt - I don't think it's the kernel (is it) but it's obviously a major part of the OS? By the way, are these deficiencies resolved in CentOS 5, which I have on my laptop (CentOS 4.4 is on my PC)?
Actually, I've just tried that and the launcher's now on my desktop - but how do I launch skype? When I (right) click on it nothing happens or try to launch from the command line, I get these errors:
skype: error while loading shared libraries: libsigc-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Are you sure you did not get the Dynamic instead of the Static version of skype ... or maybe somehow get the version out of your RPM.
=======================================
qt is this:
Summary : The shared library for the Qt GUI toolkit.
Description : Qt is a GUI software toolkit which simplifies the task of writing and maintaining GUI (Graphical User Interface) applications for the X Window System.
Qt is written in C++ and is fully object-oriented. =======================================
Basically ... all of KDE and many other applications are built using QT ... and they would all need to be rebuilt if you upgraded QT. Only a couple high visibility packages (like kernel, python, gcc and glibc) are more important to the operation of your workstation than QT.
Thanks, Johnny Hughes