A problem I found when using the Linux client for Skype is that it will try to perform file locking, which is a problem if your home partition is an NFS drive.
To overcome this limitation, create a directory on the local hard disk:
- sudo mkdir /usr/local/skype
- sudo chown tom.tom /usr/local/skype
Delete the configuration that Skype attempted to install, and symlink to the directory on the local harddisk:
- rm -rf /home/tom/.Skype
- ln -s /usr/local/skype /home/tom/.Skype
After this Skype worked as normal.