I've made a clean 32bit chroot enviroment today and tried to install skype. Everything worked just fine, but skype didn't had any font's. There were just signs. I've looked a bit at google and found BUG #283008 were it was sugestest to install media-fonts/freefont-ttf. After installing this packages skype was readable. I would suggest to add media-fonts/freefont-ttf to the dependecies of skype. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. make clean 32bit enviroment 2. install skype Portage 2.1.7.17 (default/linux/x86/10.0, gcc-4.3.4, glibc-2.10.1-r1, 2.6.33-gentoo i686) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.33-gentoo-i686-Intel-R-_Core-TM-2_CPU_6600_@_2.40GHz-with-gentoo-1.12.13 Timestamp of tree: Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:15:01 +0000 app-shells/bash: 4.0_p35 dev-lang/python: 2.6.4-r1 dev-util/cmake: 2.6.4-r3 sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.13 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.6-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.63-r1 sys-devel/automake: 1.9.6-r3, 1.10.3, 1.11.1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3 sys-devel/gcc: 4.3.4 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1 sys-devel/libtool: 2.2.6b virtual/os-headers: 2.6.30-r1 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA skype-eula" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=core2 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=core2 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="assume-digests distlocks fixpackages news parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org" LANG="de_DE.utf8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1,--hash-style=gnu,--as-needed" MAKEOPTS="-j3" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://192.168.2.60/gentoo-portage" USE="acl berkdb bzip2 cli cracklib crypt cxx dri fortran gdbm gpm iconv ipv6 modules mudflap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly openmp pam pcre perl pppd python readline reflection session spl ssl sysfs tcpd unicode x86 xorg zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="fbdev glint intel mach64 mga neomagic nv r128 radeon savage sis tdfx trident vesa via vmware voodoo" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
The dependency is probably on any truetype font. In that case dejavu is a better default, but actually we'd need a virtual for this.
Added dep, thanks for reporting.