We use Skype at work for instant messaging and for free VoIP calls between our remote offices. Skype and a Cisco VPN client are the only two things that tie me to Windows. The full featured latest versions of Skype are only available on Windows and OSX, but an older version is maintained for Linux users. There are no versions available for Solaris, and the Skype team have no plans to support it. Tonight I realized that I can run the latest Skype for Windows inside a virtual machine in "seamless mode" using the free & open source VirtualBox. Seamless mode makes Windows applications share my Solaris or Linux desktop as if they were native applications. I gave it a try and it was a huge success! I should also be able to set up the Cisco VPN client since it is real Windows XP.
I did have one problem after installing Skype. It would crash only seconds after starting every time. I found a bug ticket about this issue and learned to enable the "VT-x/AMD-V" setting in VirtualBox. After enabling this feature, Skype works perfectly. I have not made voice calls yet, but I know sound is working.
I tried to run Skype for Windows using wine but had problems. Newer versions of Skype such as 3.8 and 3.5 crash after a few seconds. I was able to find a copy of Skype 3.0 and it doesn't crash in wine. I was able to log into Skype and use text messages. However, I can't get sound working with wine + pulseaudio driver. I found a thread that talks about what's wrong. (This blog entry is about Skype on Solaris but I really did the work on Ubuntu. It should work the same on Solaris, although Solaris might not use the pulseaudio driver)
Working from his home office in Toronto,
Ryan de Laplante can be found developing software in
Java by day, and obsessing with technology by night.
Ryan has been designing and writing software for
IJW since 1998 and is very passionate about his work.
