Skype, one of the best-known video chat/calling apps, is shutting down forever on May 5, Microsoft has announced today.
Nothing gold can stay, and neither can VoIP services shorn their cultural zeitgeist it seems.
Skype has offered a Linux app for decadesReplacing Skype will be a free version of Microsoft Teams.
Active Skype users can log in to the Microsoft Teams app and instantly see their Skype message history, group chats, and contacts without needing to create a(nother) account.
Teams will no support ‘telephony’, i.e., Skype’s one remaining USP, after the transition period, meaning you won’t be able to make domestic or international calls to real numbers using Microsoft Teams.
Skype Credits can be used until the cut off date inside of either Skype or Microsoft Teams, so that’s something.
It also means those using a Skype Number will need to port that number over to another provider.
If you don’t want to use Microsoft Teams you will be able to sign in and export your data for posterity — but only for the next 60 days.
”Skype users will be in control, they’ll have the choice,”president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, Jeff Teper, told The Verge. “They can migrate their conversation history and their contacts out and move on if they want, or they can migrate to Teams.”
I won’t fake a tear for Skype’s passing – a service I’d charitably describe directionless for the best part of decade, despite the endless client revamps, pivots, feature-cribbing, and gimmicks the revolving door of product managers sought to add.
Yet, I am a bit sad too.
Back in the (g)olden days, I used Skype on Linux a lot. Chats/interviews with Canonical staffers, brainstorms with Ben (who I used to do this site with), and group chats with readers who hung out in the OMG! IRC channel—good times!
Yet, as John Oliver once opined: “What happened, Skype? You had it, and you lost it. We used to use Skype as a verb to mean ‘to video call someone’ rather than what it means now ‘to completely f[udge] up the easiest opportunity imaginable’.”
John Oliver skewered Skype in an episode The Tonight Show
Back in 2010 or so Ekiga was the ‘FOSS’ alternative to Skype — but few people used it, and fewer still liked it!
Skype’s Qt Linux client, by comparison, tended to “just work” everywhere. This was ideal when you wanted to catch up with relatives or friends on the other side of the world without the need for any evangelical lectures on why they ought to use something else!
Admittedly here in 2025, the novelty of ‘making a phone call through a computer over the internet for free, Derrick! FOR FREE!!”is quaint given there’s barely a communication platform out there which doesn’t support it.
Closed-source services choosing to support Linux rarely receive much love, but it’s important that a choice to (not) use them is there. Kudos to the original Skype team (and later Microsoft) for supporting Linux for as long as they did, and as far back as they did!
With services like WhatsApp, Slack, FaceTime, Telegram, WebRTC, Discord, and whatever chat service Google has launched this month readily—albeit not all freely—available, Skype fans aren’t short of options
—Including, thankfully, on Linux.
The official Skype snap will, presumably, vanish from the store soon, so if you haven’t logged in for a while—like the rest of the world—go install it, login and backup any important details and data at some point in the next 60 days.
Microsoft Teams, Skype’s replacement, is not on the Snap Store officially, but you can download a DEB installer from the Microsoft Teams website.
Content retrieved from: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/02/skype-hangs-up-for-good-on-may-5.
