Getting rid of the home screen and ads in Skype

[40hz]

Here's a useful how-to article recently posted over on Dedoimedo:

How to remove Skype Home screen, ads
Updated: October 19, 2012

Before we begin - this article does not promise a 100% solution, only a handful of workarounds that will help you enjoy Skype without having to uninstall it. I wanted to make this clear upfront to avoid minutes of frustrating and misleading reading. Now, that we know we are going to be enjoying a less-than-perfect solution to Skype's most annoying features, let's move on.

From the technological perspective, Skype is a decent program. From the user experience perspective, it is a bothersome, lowly product that is designed to cram advertisements down your throat. It started as a decent IM client with encryption, good audio and, later on, video collaboration. Then, it turned into a social network crapfest. And it started serving ads to you, day and night, inside your very call windows. So the question is, how do you restore Skype to some basic sanity without having to purge it away from your box?
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Read the full article here.
 

[worstje]

I didn't even know Skype served ads in its call windows. I guess I'm on an old version that I won't be upgrading any time soon!

[IainB]

Thanks @40hz.
I hadn't known about this ad-serving business before.
The article you link to is interesting, but the guy who wrote it seems to be a real bigot about automatic-gearbox cars. Odd.

[f0dder]

So, umm, while on the topic of skype: is there any opensource replacements around that are as easy to use and work as well as skype? (voice+video chat, don't need phone connections).

The backdoors(?) that Skype previous had were bad enough, but after MS bought it, official law-enforcements backdoors have been added (no, this is not paranoia, and no - don't ask.) - while I don't do anything shady on Skype, I still don't like those changes, so... alternatives?