Skype can't connect

According to this post, skype versions older than 4.3 are unable to connect as of today (2014-08-01). Though it could have just been a temporary outage of the skype servers, I was able to connect after updating skype.

First get rid of the old skype from repo:

sudo apt-get purge skype

Second, delete your ~/.Skype folder

rm -R ~/.Skype

Then download skype-ubuntu-precise_4.3.0.37-1_i386.deb from http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-linux/?intcmp=blogs--generic-click--skype-4-3-for-linux and execute it as a deb package:

sudo dpkg -i skype-ubuntu-precise_4.3.0.37-1_i386.deb

I had the same problem and the problem is that Skype 4.2 is no longer available. The solution is to install a fresh version of Skype 4.3 which is already available for users.

Here is what to do :

Step 1: Remove the old version of Skype (4.2 or older)

cd ~ && rm -r .Skype    
sudo apt-get remove skype skype-bin:i386 skype:i386
sudo apt-get install sni-qt:i386

Step 2: Install Skype version 4.3

For 32-bit Operating Systems: follow these steps

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gdebi
wget download.skype.com/linux/skype-ubuntu-precise_4.3.0.37-1_i386.deb
sudo gdebi skype-ubuntu-precise_4.3.0.37-1_i386.deb

For 64-bit Operating Systems: follow these steps

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gdebi
wget download.skype.com/linux/skype-ubuntu-precise_4.3.0.37-1_i386.deb
sudo gdebi skype-ubuntu-precise_4.3.0.37-1_i386.deb

That's it. Happy Skyping :-)