Arch Linux User Repository

There is a problem with Skype being stuck on the login screen on first launch. That happens when your org.freedesktop.secrets provider doesn't have a keyring configured, i.e. also first launch.

I don't know if this is a quirk of libsecret or Skype itself, but we can't do pretty much anything about it anyway.

Solutions are simple though:

1. Despite the login screen being stuck, the login itself is actually successful. So just kill it and run Skype again, it should be fine after that.

2. Configure your default keyring manually (using seahorse, kwalletmanager etc.) before running Skype.

To get automatic login, install a package that provides org.freedesktop.secrets, e.g. gnome-keyring.

To get a systray icon, install libappindicator-gtk3. On GNOME, then install the appindicator extension.

I don't see how that's possible that you are not getting that message while running linux-mainline because that sysctl doesn't exist in mainline kernel (it is added by Arch and Debian only):

$ sysctl -n kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone
sysctl: cannot stat /proc/sys/kernel/unprivileged_userns_clone: No such file or directory

$ echo $?
255

$ uname -r
6.2.0-rc7-1-mainline

Skype still runs fine for me because mainline Linux has enabled user namespaces with no option to disable it.

@eclairevoyant, can you please clarify your issue? I run the mainline kernel and I don't get that warning message displayed (because kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone is set by default there). Also it has been discussed here previously that if it is not set (e.g. when using linux-hardened) then this packages does not run correctly so that is why the warning was added.

Might need to check the post-install script, if you use a kernel that doesn't have that sysctl (e.g. mainline kernel) this package (incorrectly) warns about the control being off, even though the app runs fine.

Maybe the main dir worth moving to /opt?
As stated in the guidelines:

/opt/pkg Large self-contained packages

#install 
git clone https://gitlab.com/andrew_ryan/skypeforlinux-bin.git
cd skypeforlinux-bin
yay -U ./skypeforlinux-bin-8.54.0.85-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

Even with gnome-keyring installed, asks for username and password each time it is started. Is there another trick to getting it to remain logged in?

@nursoda, please note the first sentence in the top pinned comment here. To get automatic login, you need to install a package which provides org.freedesktop.secrets. If you search the packages you will see that gnome-keyring, keepassxc, and kwallet-secrets (from the AUR) provide that. Skype changed to this in Dec 2019.

There already are a few comments on Skype logging the user out upon start, along with the suggestion (even pinned) that one needs to install gnome-keyring. I'd like to add my insights here:

I use KDE and ever since have kwallet installed. Skype USED to work fine with that but stopped doing so after an update (probably more than a year ago):

Without gnome-keyring installed, Skype now starts and shortly shows the full logged-in windows including my Skype contacts. So I assumed that the secret is provided by kwallet. However, after a few seconds, it logs out. After login, it works fine. After closing the tray icon and restarting Skype, it's the same (logs out after a few secs).

So I installed gnome-keyring. It needs to be initialized (set a password¹) the first time it is started. Consecutive full Skype restarts lead to the expected behavior: Skype returns to a logged-in state after the restart.

My question is: Shouldn't Skype be able to use kwalled? Probably an issue Microsoft must solve. It might help if somebody associated to the KDE team raises attention there.

Notes:

¹ Mind to use your login password if you want that this keyring automatically gets unlocked upon user login; if you need to change your Gnome keyring password in KDE, the easiest way is to install seahorse and to right-click on the login-keyring.