Ubuntu - Skype won't start, crashes with aborted.

Completely out of the blue a previously working install of Skype started crashing out every time it was started. The window would flash up briefly, and then dissapear, leaving an "aborted" message in the terminal. I'm unsure as to what caused this, as I hadn't recently applied any updates, however I eventually found a fix.

For 64 bit the problem appears to be to do some combination of ia32-libs and the Skype temporary directory. So (skip to the second command if you're using 32 bit):

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ia32-libs

and remove the skype temporary directory (This will remove stored passwords and conversations):

rm -rf ~/.Skype

Start Skype again and hopefully it'll work! While searching for information on this problem I saw a fair few different fixes, with differing success rates, so while this may or may not work for you, it's worth a try.

Otherwise, this thread on launchpad may help.

Edit: The problem seems to be fairly widespread, and across distributions - So I suspect Skype have managed to do something that has broken current installations of their program on Linux.

Edit2: A less intrusive and more specific alternative of the second command appears to go along the lines of (thanks to whoever commented this):

 rm ~/.Skype/shared.xml

This will preserve things like your chat history. As this is the file causing the problem.