Install Skype in Kali Linux and rollback changes while meeting dependency requirements for both 32-bit (i386) and 64-bit (amd64) installation

Read full details here:
Install Skype in Kali Linux and rollback changes while meeting dependency requirements for both 32-bit (i386) and 64-bit (amd64) installation

Skype is a freemium voice-over-IP service and instant messaging client, currently developed by the Microsoft Skype Division. The name was derived from “sky” and “peer”. Skype was first released in August 2003. It was created by by Janus Friis (Denmark) and Niklas Zennström (Sweden) in cooperation with Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn (Estonia), who supplied the backend which was also used in Kazaa. Skype had 663 million registered users as of the end of 2010. It was bought by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5 billion. Microsoft’s Skype division headquarters is in Luxembourg, but most of the development team and 44% of the overall employees of the division are still situated in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.

The service allows users to communicate with peers by voice using a microphone, video by using a webcam, and instant messaging over the Internet. Phone calls may be placed to recipients on the traditional telephone networks. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free of charge, while calls to landline telephones and mobile phones are charged via a debit-based user account system. Skype has also become popular for its additional features, including file transfer, and videoconferencing. Competitors include SIP and H.323-based services, such as Linphone and Google Hangouts.

Unlike most other VoIP services, Skype is a hybrid peer-to-peer and client–server system. It makes use of background processing on computers running Skype software, and this is reflected in Skype’s original proposed name of Sky Peer-to-Peer.

Some network administrators have banned Skype on corporate, government, home and education networks, citing reasons such as inappropriate usage of resources, excessive bandwidth usage, and security concerns.[Source:Wikipedia]

Microsoft released Skype for Linux users (interesting that Microsoft, the rival for Linux released Linux package which just shows how powerful and demanding Linux communities has became).

You should be able to download Skype from Official website.

But that’s nothing compared to what you have to go through to install it. I’ve seen too many posts in Kali Forum and other blog sites that explains how to install Skype. Every one of them says to use apt-get -f install or in short, to force your installation cause none of them managed to do a clean install and forcing dependencies was the only way to complete their installation. Now, we all know by doing that you will end up with broken dependencies. Also you should know how to roll back your changes (remove Skype and dependency packages). In this post I will show you the followings:

1. Install Skype from Microsoft’s official skype-install.deb package using MultiArch (i386).
2. Remove Skype
3. Clean your broken dependencies
4. A complete rollback of MultiArch and clean aptitude for remaining files.

Sound’s good and fair? Because this post is going to be long, you’ll have to be patient and read to the last line. I also suggest to do it in Virtual Environment in case you’re afraid to do it in your main installation. Personally, I installed it in my main Kali Linux installation and nothing broke, I managed to do a complete installation and rollback meeting every dependency for Skype. So let’s move on to the instructions for how to Install Skype in Kali Linux and rollback changes with meeting dependency requirements for both 32-bit and 64-bit installation.

Install Skype in Kali Linux

To install Skype in a 64-bit Kali Linux installation, you will need to enable MultiArch. For 32-bit (i386) it’s much easier. Please note that I’ve tested this in a 64-Bit Kali Linux installation, so those who are using 32-Bit Kali Linux installation, instructions might be slight different, in fact easier.

MultiArch is the term being used to refer to the capability of a system to install and run applications of multiple different binary targets on the same system. For example running a i386-linux-gnu application on an amd64-linux-gnu system.

Those who are using 64-bit Kali Linux installation, start from Step 1. Those who are using 32-Bit (i386) Kali Linux installation can start fromStep 2.

Step 1: Enable MultiArch in 64-bit Kali Linux

Enabling MultiArch is rather easy in Kali Linux. One thing to remember, you need to have the Official Kali Linux Repository added. In case you messed up your /etc/apt/sources.list file, following instructions on adding official Kali Linux repositories.

Now assuming you’re using 64-Bit Kali Linux Installation, type in the following in your terminal:

root@kali:~# dpkg --add-architecture i386

Read the rest of it here: Install Skype in Kali Linux and rollback changes while meeting dependency requirements for both 32-bit (i386) and 64-bit (amd64) installation