For some reason, the latest Skype for Linux version has two bugs which prevent practical usage: 1. While the webcam / video device is opened and sends video fine, the local preview in both the Settings page and as a floating overlay is blank. 2. The mic audio fails (and yes, I have checked the ALSA mixer and other settings). This works fine for other applications and settings do not indicate any problems. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open Skype 2. Check Audio/Video Settings. Note no video preview. 2. Try to make Echo Test Call. This fails (due to lack of Microphone) 3. Make any other calls. No mic audio and blank video overlay. I have found a solution to this by using my local portage overlay to restore the older skypeforlinux ebuilds removed by: https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/commit/76ddb59e4466c89cdc99be3fd01fd943cfd20ded net-im/skypeforlinux-8.68.0.100 works fine and does not exhibit either of these issues. I would suggest not to remove older versions of skypeforlinux if they are present here as it probably indicates that the newer versions may be "stable" but can have issues in some situations: https://repo.skype.com/rpm/stable/ I would also recommend at least restoring the net-im/skypeforlinux-8.68.0.100 ebuild to the portage tree for now so that users have a working version available without resorting to ebuild necromancy :)
I'm having the same mistake here!
I have retested and all versions of net-im/skypeforlinux currently present in the portage tree are broken for me, either due to lack of camera preview / output and/or lack of microphone/audio tested using Echo Test. To be clear, this includes v8.69.0.77, v8.71.0.36 and v8.72.0.82. The newest version which works is v8.68.0.100 which has been removed from portage :| As I said previously, I would suggest that Gentoo does not remove ebuilds from the portage tree for skypeforlinux which are still present at the upstream RPM location: https://repo.skype.com/rpm/stable/ These still being present would indicate that there is some issue where they are still supported or used due to REASONS. For now, the solution to this is to restore the v8.68.0.100 and v8.67.0.96 ebuilds to the portage tree.
@Eduardo Coutinho Scalabrin: If you want to fix this locally, then you will need to restore the older ebuilds to a local portage overlay: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:Parts/Portage/CustomTree#Adding_unofficial_ebuilds
I think I also know why this is happening. I had a very similar issue with www-client/chromium which caused a loss of camera preview and sound function on a relatively recent update. This broke several sites which use WebRTC for video/audio chat features. The solution to this was go to chrome://flags and enable the following: #ignore-gpu-blocklist #enable-accelerated-video-decode The issue seems to be that there is autodetect of hardware acceleration, but Chrome/Chromium has a GPU blocklist which breaks this on "unsupported" system configuration ... such as Gentoo. You can override this with the experimental options, but annoying this is not done by default. Since skypeforlinux is an Electron application which is basically bundled with a copy of Chromium as a VM, I would suspect the same issue is occurring with the local copy *sigh* Not sure how to patch that, but may be possible.
(In reply to David Turner from comment #3) > @Eduardo Coutinho Scalabrin: > > If you want to fix this locally, then you will need to restore the older > ebuilds to a local portage overlay: > https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:Parts/Portage/ > CustomTree#Adding_unofficial_ebuilds Hello, David! Thanks for the tip, but I can't download the .rpm binaries...
@Eduardo Coutinho Scalabrin: The source rpm files have probably been purged from the Gentoo Portage distfiles mirrors, so you will need to manually download them from the upstream: https://repo.skype.com/rpm/stable/ Drop the missing rpm files in the /usr/portage/distfiles folder and that should then work i.e. the ebuilds will check their checksums and find them fine so will skip the download step.
The pull request 20891 to fix this by restoring the last working version of 8.68.0.100 to the portage tree was closed as the upstream has removed the source RPMs. However, none of the versions currently in portage for this work still. I have tested with 8.72.0.94 and 8.73.0.92 and both exhibit a failure of local video and no ability to make calls i.e. microphone / echo test fails. This means that no build in tree is usable :|
(In reply to David Turner from comment #7) > The pull request 20891 to fix this by restoring the last working version of > 8.68.0.100 to the portage tree was closed as the upstream has removed the > source RPMs. > > However, none of the versions currently in portage for this work still. I > have tested with 8.72.0.94 and 8.73.0.92 and both exhibit a failure of local > video and no ability to make calls i.e. microphone / echo test fails. > > This means that no build in tree is usable :| Hello, David! I found a solution to the microphone problem, now everything is working for me again, just edit the file '/etc/pulse/default.pa', adding this 'load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:x,y', where x is the card number and y is the device number. I have no problem with the video, see if your webcam is compatible with Linux on http://www.ideasonboard.org/uvc/ With best regards!
