Skype on KDE 4.2 and Ubuntu Intrepid

Well, now that KDE 4.2 has been released,  I had to try it out, being on a strict Gnome diet for 2 years now. So I jumped on the bandwagon – and furiously typed “sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop”.

Now that I had all the bling I could ever want on my desktop, it was to time to … work.

Skype, was needed – and so I installed skype from the medibuntu repository. As always, I could hear but could not use the mic.

The solution was almost the same as my previous post:

1. In skype options, select “Sound In” as your first hardware device. In my case it was “HDA Intel (hw:intel:0)” (for others, this could vary)
2. Then open kmix, by double clicking the volume icon and then selecting “mixer”.
3. In “Configure channels”, select “Mic as output”, “Capture 1″, “Capture 2″
   
4. Mute “Mic as output”
5. Tick “Capture 1″. (for others, this could vary)
6. make your test call to “echo123″ and enjoy!
7. remember to run kbuildsycoca4 to register the application in Kicker/Start Menu

Getting mic to work with Skype in Ubuntu Intrepid

This was something which almost made me go back to windows for sometime while I can use Skype. But then I went through several help forums, but could not get it to work.

Finally, I remembered something – Ubuntu Intrepid has a bug in which it mutes most of its sound devices. You need to re-enable it using

alsamixer -Dhw

So I went about exploring in the sound voume preferences window (by double clicking the speaker icon on the top right)

First you need to click the “Preferences” button on the bottom of the sound-preferences window. Select “mic as output”. Now you get an extra tab called “Switches”. Click on it and if you find a damn option called

mic as output

make sure it is NOT selected. I did this and voila.. everything worked.

I think what is happening is that by default, mic is selected as output in the Intrepid install.