Skype is a video calling service that makes it easy to make free or low-cost calls over the internet to anyone with Skype or even a telephone.

Download and install Skype from skype.com; download the appropriate installer for your Linux distribution. Unfortunately, as Skype was written as a 32 bit program and its code is not open source software (ie, its code is not free), so it is available only for 32 bit computers and cannot be ported to 64 bit by independent programmers.

Once installed, launch it from the Activities Overview as usual.

Your first time launching Skype will require you to sign in to, or create a new, account. Once you've signed in, your online contact list should appear; if you don't have any contacts yet, search for new ones by their Skype account name or email address. Invite them to your contact list and once they've accepted you, you'll be able to call them for free over the internet!