It’s very kind of Skype to provide a linux version of their (closed source) client.

But if you run a 64 bit version of Fedora you’ll realize that they provide a 32 bit only rpm, plus, unfortunately, even while using a full featured time saver like

sudo yum localinstall skype-2.2.0.35-fedora.i586.rpm

no dependency is autoresolved, and launching the client will result in missing files or dependencies:

skype
bash: /usr/bin/skype: /lib/ld-linux.so.2: bad ELF interpreter: No such file or directory
skype: error while loading shared libraries: libasound.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

If you (like me) enjoy the “dummy way”, you may launch a

sudo yum whatprovides */ld-linux.so.2

to find out the name of the missing package.. Installing that will fix the dependency problem, however, launching again the skype client will stop on another missing file.

For the record, this is the full list:

ld-linux.so.2
libXv.so.1
libXss.so.1
libQtDBus.so.4
libQtGui.so.4

Even if you have performed a full installation of Fedora x86_64, you’ll probably miss one or more files needed for starting skype, since it needs the i686 version of them.

Paste the following one liner to save your time and launch skype without problems:

sudo yum install glibc.i686 alsa-lib.i686 libXv.i686 libXScrnSaver.i686 qt.i686 qt-x11.i686

Alternatively, you should run your own jabber server and use wonderful Pidgin.