You can communicate with the Skype client over DBus, which allows you to replace a lot (although not all) of the UI with something else. Two examples: http://c

You can communicate with the Skype client over DBus, which allows you to replace a lot (although not all) of the UI with something else. Two examples: http://code.google.com/p/skype4pidgin/ http://code.google.com/p/skype4pidgin/ https://github.com/technomancy/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/skyyy https://github.com/technomancy/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/skyy... The protocol is incomplete (the "native" Qt UI isn't built on it), but it is at least documented on their dev site.