Skype announce a new beta version for Linux, with extra features and better sound and video quality. This release comes with High Quality Video

Skype for Linux has always lagged behind in development from its Windows and Mac counterparts and users of certain Linux distributions can have problems installing Skype in part because the client is rarely updated frequently enough to work with the latest kernel iterations. Moreover, because Skype is a proprietary application, it isn’t installed by default in most Linux distributions and finding it in repositories (even multi-verse repositories) can be difficult.

Skype makes a point to mention “an open source UI” — which makes us think that it will just be the GUI libraries that will be open sourced, not any of the underlying VoIP or communications libraries. In other words, it might be easier for the Gnome or KDE teams to integrate Skype into the existing X-Windows platforms, but the base of what makes Skype work will still be closed off.