Skype being deprecated from 3rd party in favor of flatpak

davidjharder

Hey everyone (and especially Skype users), this is a quick post to inform you that we will be deprecating Skype from our Third Party packages in favor of the flatpak version.
We're doing this because Microsoft no longer provides updated Debian style packages; the source for our Third Party Skype package. See this page for details.

We recommend that users:

Remove the Third Party Skype package using the Solus Software Center
Install the official Flathub version with the following commands:

flatpak install flathub com.skype.Client

This assumes you already have flatpak installed with the Flathub repository, if not use the following commands:

sudo eopkg install flatpak
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Then reboot your machine, and install Skype as above.

If you have questions, or encounter issues, please post below.

Lastly, special thanks to @ahahn94 and @Staudey, who do most of the work keeping our Third Party packages updated.

Axios

davidjharder Wont that effect flatpaks to they said its only going be in snap?
Just wondering

nolan

davidjharder sudo eopkg install flatpak

just to be sure, is it the correct command? seems to me that it's incorrect

Staudey

Cheers. I kept oscillating between being too lazy and forgetting to write a post like this,

Staudey

Axios The flatpak can theoretically use the snap as a base (thanks to @Justin for the info). Seems like they're not doing it yet though. Maybe I'll take a look at updating it.

Good point in any case!

SethStorm666

Will Solus Software Center in a near future have flatpak instead of the third party?

Staudey

SethStorm666 I don't know about "near future", but as you can read in one of the recent Sync Updates posts that work is in progress (by including KDE Discover resp. GNOME Software as replacements for the old Solus Software Center)

SethStorm666

Hmm... I really like Solus own software center instead of Gnomes. Tried it on Fedora 39 on one of my test machines. But I guess it's a matter of different taste.

Staudey

It's more a matter of solus-sc being written in Python 2 and not having support for flatpak already built-in, as well as being a homegrown solution that the Solus project has to maintain themselves.
Personally I also quite like the Software Center and would like to keep it if I could fix all the issues with it; but I can't, and adopting a well-maintained existing project instead seems like the most realistic way forward.

Axios

Staudey I understand the issues just hope Solus doesnt become just another distro
Just thinking.

Sebastian

Yes, Solus Software Center will be missed. It set Solus apart and was part of Solus identity.

riffer

I like that Solus software center has everything in the depository available. All those little files you need. Like Synaptic has for debian.

JTCPingas

It sounds like developing a new or overhauled solus-sc is not as trivial as one might think. During my Fedora adventures, gnome-software worked just fine for the most part. The only thing I had to get used to was having to use the terminal for any non-gui package that doesn't provide appstream metainfo. Given the improvements it has enjoyed along with discover, they should serve as good replacements. Plus it's nice to have a gui to easily install flatpaks.

davidjharder

JTCPingas It sounds like developing a new or overhauled solus-sc is not as trivial as one might think

Not trivial and also of little added value in the current ecosystem. solus-sc was a pioneer of sorts, including a third-party section. Now we see the wider Linux community has settled on Flatpaks as the "third-party" standard and maintaining a bespoke GUI is starting to look like unneeded parallel development

User_007

I like the Solus SC too, it's fast, simple, not bloated, categories are well organized. Gnome SC is all this not in my opinion.
But I also understand it's kinda outdated because of python 2.

Personally I user the terminal to upgrade the OS and also seaching via terminal is fine but for discovering I like to use the SC.

SOLUSfiddler

nolan
To install the flatpak repo:
sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
Reboot, then to install Skype:
sudo flatpak install flathub com.skype.Client
Press ENTER to run the command, confirm with Y + ENTER when asked.
Reboot, then start Skype and set it up to your liking.

Staudey

nolan just to be sure, is it the correct command? seems to me that it's incorrect

Yes, that's the correct command to install the flatpak package on Solus (it instead of install works too as a shorthand)

JTCPingas

SOLUSfiddler Flatpaks can be installed without sudo.

nolan

Staudey aaah ok, ok, I misunderstood what @davidjharder were trying to write, my bad