I wrote recently regarding using Microsoft Skype for Business / Lync 2013 in Pidgin, this has worked really well for our Lubuntu 14.04 clients, running Pidgin. Having some time off work I decided to try and get this working also on my Ubuntu 14.04 laptop.

The problem is that Ubuntu uses Empathy by default, rather than Pidgin, but I found that the steps were virtually identical (cut and pasted from my earlier post):

Download and Dependencies

1. Install build tools if you don’t already have them:

   sudo apt-get install build-essential

2. Install checkinstall if you don’t already have it:

   sudo apt-get install checkinstall

3. Download source files.

4. Extract source:

   tar -xvvzf pidgin-sipe-1.20.1.tar.gz

5. Change into source directory:

   cd pidgin-sipe-1.20.1

6. Read carefully the README file in the source directory.

7. Install dependencies listed in the README:

   # apt-get install libpurple-dev libtool intltool pkg-config libglib2.0-dev libxml2-dev libnss3-dev libssl-dev libkrb5-dev libnice-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev

These dependencies may change over time, and your particular requirements may be different from mine, so please read the README and that information should take precedence.

Compile and Install

Lastly, as an ordinary user, you should now be able to compile. If it fails at any stage, simply read the error and install the missed dependency.

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall

I found checkinstall was pre-populated with sensible settings, and I was able to continue without making any changes. Once complete a Debian package will have been created in the current directory, but it will have already been installed for you.

Add Account in Empathy

Still in a terminal type:

$ empathy-accounts

Then simply click the + button to add an account, select the Account Type “sipe”, enter your email address in the Account field and click Log-in. Then highlight the newly created account and Edit Connection Preferences, opening up the Advanced section. I completed the following:

• Login: enter your Skype for Business email address
• Password
• Server: leave blank
• Transport: auto
• User agent: UCCAPI/15.0.4420.1017 OC/15.0.4420.1017
• Authentication: auto

And that really was all that there was to it.

I was surprised to learn that Ubuntu 14.04 can talk to Skype for Business AKA Lync 2013 using the Pidgin Instant Messaging client. The general steps were:

# apt-get install pidgin pidgin-sipe

And then restart Pidgin and add a new Account. The Office Communicator is the relevant plugin, with the following parameters:

• Protocol: Office Communicator
• Username: Your Office 365 or Skype for Business username - probably your email address
• Password: Your password is obviously required - and will be stored unencrypted in the config file, so you may wish to leave this blank and enter at each login
• Server[:Port]: Leave empty if your set-up has autodiscovery
• Connection type: Auto
• User Agent: UCCAPI/15.0.4420.1017 OC/15.0.4420.1017
• Authentication scheme: TLS-DSK

I am unclear why the user agent is required, and whether that will need to change from time to time or not. So far it has worked fine here.

Unfortunately a few days ago the above set-up stopped working, with “Failed to authenticate with server”. It seems that you must now use version 1.20 of the Sipe plugin, which fixes “Office365 rejects RC4 in TLS-DSK”. As this version was only completed three days ago, it is not yet available in any of the Ubuntu repositories that I have been able to find, you will probably have to compile yourself.

Broadly speaking I followed these key stages:

1. Install build tools if you don’t already have them:

   sudo apt-get install build-essential

2. Install checkinstall if you don’t already have it:

   sudo apt-get install checkinstall

3. Download source files.

4. Extract source:

   tar -xvvzf pidgin-sipe-1.20.1.tar.gz

5. Change into source directory:

   cd pidgin-sipe-1.20.1

6. Read carefully the README file in the source directory.

7. Install dependencies listed in the README:

   # apt-get install libpurple-dev libtool intltool pkg-config libglib2.0-dev libxml2-dev libnss3-dev libssl-dev libkrb5-dev libnice-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev

These dependencies may change over time, and your particular requirements may be different from mine, so please read the README and that information should take precedence.

Lastly, as an ordinary user, you should now be able to compile. If it fails at any stage, simply read the error and install the missed dependency.

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall

I found checkinstall was pre-populated with sensible settings, and I was able to continue without making any changes. Once complete a Debian package will have been created in the current directory, but it will have already been installed for you.

For some reason I found that at this stage Pidgin would no longer run, as it was now named /usr/bin/pidgin.orig instead of /usr/bin/pidgin, I tried removing and reinstalling pidgin but to no avail. In the end I created a symlink (ln -s /usr/bin/pidgin.orig /usr/bin/pidgin), but you should not do this unless you experience the same issue. If you know the reason for this I would be delighted to receive your feedback, as this isn’t a problem that I have come across before.

Restarting Pidgin and the Office Communicator sprung into life once more. Sadly I would imagine that this won’t be the last time this plugin will break, such are the vagaries of connecting to closed proprietary networks.

Skype is important, though, for new Linux users. It is no good telling them to use SIP, as their friends have Skype and most people do not want to make the sacrifices that some of us feel are necessary.

Feeling a little guilty, I decided to give it a go. I was expecting to download the 32-bit version of Skype, and the 32-bit libraries, but was surprised to see a 64-bit version for Ubuntu. Given that Ubuntu is based on Debian, it was worth a try:

• Download Skype for Linux

I installed it with:

$ sudo dpkg -i skype-ubuntu-intrepid_2.1.0.81-1_amd64.deb

And, erm, it seems to work. Well at least the test call worked perfectly.

So we seem to be able to tick the Skype 64-bit box as “job done”, now how about iTunes…