After all, Redmond has a long history of toward Linux and other free and , so it seemed difficult to imagine that the company would expend any effort on maintaining its newly acquired Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) software for Linux users.

Life is full of surprises, however, and last week Microsoft served up one of them. Specifically, it announced on Thursday the official release of Skype 4.0 for Linux, simultaneously moving the software out of beta and skipping several version numbers ahead from the previous Skype 2.2.

'Four Rooms for Improvement'

“We'd like to thank our Skype for Linux users for your patience awaiting Skype 4.0 for Linux, codenamed 'Four Rooms for Improvement,' which is now available,” wrote Skype Linux UI developer Marco Cimmino in the official . “With this release, we have finally filled the gap with our other desktop clients and we are now making many of the latest Skype features, as well as a lot of UI improvements, available to our penguin lovers.”

Four major changes, in fact, are particularly notable in the new release, Cimmino explained. First is a new Conversations View--easily disabled for those who don't like it--that lets users track all of their chats in a unified window.