The result for those unwilling to - or unable to - upgrade is drastic: older versions of Skype will stop working they won’t be able to sign into, access features of, or connect with users on the service.

The update is important as older versions of the Skype client will soon be unable to sign in and access the service. As announced earlier this year, Microsoft plans to retire support for older versions across all desktop and mobile platforms, including Linux ‘in the near future’. News of this addition has a more pressing importance than simply adding a few new features. Now offered through the Canonical Partner Repository, used to distribute gratis, proprietary and closed-source software to desktop users, this manual step is no longer necessary.

Since its release back in June, the native desktop client has been available to install using binary and Debian installers from the software’s official website. Skype 4.3 introduces a new look, improves chat features, makes file transfers more reliable and adds support for newer versions of PulseAudio, the sound server used by many Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. The latest stable release of Skype for Linux is now available to install from the Ubuntu Software Center on 12.04 LTS and 14.04 LTS.

Download skype for ubuntu 14.04