Update: I just gave up and uninstalled skypeforlinux-bin. I’m fed up with it. After taking a few minutes to log in (if the window isn’t visible, it doesn’t progress much through logging out and in and all), it looked like everything was fine, but didn’t show contact presence status or display incoming calls, which is something I’ve seen happen once or twice, but those times it sorted itself out after a few minutes, whereas this time it hadn’t after ten minutes, and I’m just done with it. I only used it once a week anyway. Not sure if this is actual Linux client breakage, or bugs in the web tech part of the stack, or some combination.

So for the last while until my family switches to something else, I’ll stick with Skype for Android, which is… not completely broken. But all their stuff is falling apart. In the last few months, Skype for Android stopped receiving calls unless the app is open (or perhaps been opened recently, not sure). Maybe Android background app killing is partly to blame, but nothing else that acts like a dialler has trouble.

Everyone keeps on changing their software and making it worse. :-(