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There's always Gaim and Miranda IM if they're looking for simple and efficient multi-protocol messengers.

In europe, its extremely common for people to have MSN, whilst the trend stateside seems to be more toward AIM (with MSN still significant there too).

or you can get an awesome open-source program like miranda which supports ICQ, AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu, Tlen, Netsend and tons more... all in a ~3meg memory footprint.

Trillian is OK feature-wise (it supports most of the major protocols completely), but there's also Miranda, which is an open-source 'minimal' client. It's got a ways to go (their AIM plug-in still uses TOC instead of OSCAR), but depending on what you need it might be good for you.

very recently according to their website http://miranda-im.org/
it says there that it was released... tomorrow :)

Quit whining and move to a better IM client that is light, but has this and countless other features as plugins.

With so many mentions of Trillian and GAIM, I'd just like to point out the third alternative (that was actually around before either of the aforementioned products): Miranda-IM

It's free/oss software, Windows only (unfortunately), and has more plugins than either GAIM or Trillian. Not only can you do the basic stuff (plugins for new protocols and such), you can also entirely replace the interface with one of the many plugins. There's even a plugin that adds PHP as a scripting language.

While it's not the easiest program to get started with (there's a ton of options, even more if you have a lot of plugins installed), once you've got it configured to your liking there's simply no comparison (in my opinion, anyway).

Minimal, fast, native controls, open source. I'd highly recommend checking it out.

http://miranda-im.org

Miranda is a nice chat client for older systems. It supports multiple chat protocols and does not require installation. The site says it can even be run from a floppy drive. I prefer it over gaim and trillian.

http://www.miranda-im.org/

I saw that Miranda had been ripped off for (at least) a second time.

Going to all that trouble just to rip people off and install spyware. It's fucking sad.

• Gaim
• Miranda
• EB-lite and Ayttm, which are two forks of EveryBuddy
• IM2

I like Miranda better than Trillian.

trillian sucks

I use a weather plugin for the Miranda IM messaging client (win32), something called "Weather Protocol 3.3.8", though there's a whole bunch of them there. I just add locations by IATA code, and they appear on my 'buddy' list with all the other entries. Works well.

I use a weather plugin for the Miranda IM messaging client (win32), something called "Weather Protocol 3.3.8", though there's a whole bunch of them there. I just add locations by IATA code, and they appear on my 'buddy' list with all the other entries. Works well.

Microsoft Windows Services for Unix. It should be named Unix Services for Windows, but whatever. Provides a development environment superior in many ways to Cygwin's.

MetaPad. Great Notepad replacement; no bells and whistles, but a few useful additions.

Ethereal. An Ethernet sniffer, useful for debugging problems and snooping on your neighbors.

WinCVS. GUI front end for CVS client.

I've always used Miranda IM (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo) rather than Gaim (I hate its messaging style :) ), and never have looked at Trillian.
I have not heard of AGP, Grisoft AVG you meant?
For text editors, I usually use EditPad Lite
Everyone has their own preferences and likes. :)

Don't forget about GNUWIN II!

All your favorite OSS stuff, but get them there for windows. All SPYWARE FREE!

You will also find a few apps that are *gasp* Windows Only! (Like Miranda IM which I wish would go cross platform.)

Anyway, its always great to find more sources for clean software.

Trillian sucks big bad donkey-balls compared to Miranda which is superior in every department except useless eyecandy.

Currently they're trying to push stable 0.4 out the door, but the stable 0.3.4 can easily be upgraded to the same functionality: tabbed chat-dialogs, discrete popups that notify you of whatever you like, integration with almost everything, excellent configuration and about a gazillion plugins for anything that might suit your fancy.

Ad-aware
AVG 7 Anti-virus
QCD player
Real & Quicktime Alternative.
Skype
Miranda
SoulSeek
FileZilla

I can heartedly recommend Miranda to be added to the list if you are so inclined. It is a chat application that works in very much the same way as Trillian, allowing custom plug-ins and skins that is compatible with the majority of the IM networks around today. http://www.miranda-im.org/

Foobar2000 (audio player)
Miranda (instant messenger)
PuTTY (telnet/ssh client. but if you didn't know _that_, then you really have no business being here.) :P

Well, on os x i use http://www.adiumx.com/ (gaim in a cocoa interface) and on Windows i still to this day use http://www.miranda-im.org/, and did do so ever since ICQ clocked the official client with ad's.

The main issue i have with trillian is that is uses so many resources on doing a thing that souldent use any resources, plus the app is just ... well, slow.

But it is really cool that they have gotten the video conference support, i really hope to see a OSS app that can do that. (yes i know of http://gaim-vv.sf.net/ - but it just doesnt work all that well)

IMHO, it's too late for Trillian to claw market space back. As people have mentioned, GAIM is there, works really well, and is cross platform. Personally, I use Miranda IM now, and I run IRC, ICQ, MSN (bleh!), Yahoo and Jabber all at once (it supports many others, those are just the ones I want/need). It's current, maintained software (whereas I'm once bitten, twice shy on the issue of maintenance with Trillian) and I have absolutely no inclination to bother going over to look at Trillian again.

It's also important to realise that Trillian is commercial-ware and that the 'free' version is, at best, a crippled attempt at tempting you to buy the actual featured version.

Miranda beats Trillian hands down.
Miranda is open source.

Miranda seamlessly imports contact lists from Y!,ICQ and MSN.

Miranda can use Y!,MSN,ICQ,IRC,AIM,Jabber and loads more.

Miranda can run it all in a single nice window.

Miranda has fully customisable skins and icons.

Miranda has no adverts, ever.

Miranda has plug-ins galore...

Some of my favourite plugins are -

CAPS_LOCK flasher - incoming message? Your keyboard lights flash.

'WUMF' -Who is using my files? - Popup saying who accesses your files on a network and when, and will log all of this information.

Postit notes and reminders.

There are many more plugins.

Miranda is totally free, is open source, and simply is better than Trillian, and even Gaim.

Download it, no spyware, no ad-ware from http://www.miranda-im.org/

Same thing for me. At my University they installed Trillian Free everywhere, but I prefer carrying Miranda IM on my USB key. I really don't like Trillian, but I feel more "at home" with Miranda.

...port this to Miranda.

...when there's Miranda messenger ?.. Open source, native windows application for icq and bunch of other messaging protocols ? I mean.. Gaim uses gtk, wich is not very stable on windows. And it looks quite odd to windows users.

Because, you know, shunning every non-geek out there, and hell, lots of geeks too, is the cool thing to do. By stating such things like "OMFG itz aim, u no America On Line, thatz so not l33t im not gonna use that" we demonstrate our superiour intellectual capability. Why would any self respecting Slashdot user have an AIM account? Because they want to talk to be other people, who just so happen to have an aim account. I think a proper question would be, why would any self respecting Slashdot user have the AIM client, when there are Better Alternatives out there?

Gaim on Windows? What's the point when there's Miranda?

I usually use Miranda IM (for AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo), but I'm looking into Gaim.

• Portable Firefox - Web browser
• Portable Thunderbird - Email client
• Portable Sunbird - Calendar application
• Portable NVU - HTML Editor

• OpenOffice (PDF) - Office Suite
• Miranda IM - Instant messaging
• FileZilla - FTP

I agree with you to some extent. I like IRC as much as the next antisocial geek, but IRC is IMHO dying. The networks are either crap, unstable, or unknown and the worst part is that IRC is not the same as it was when I started back in '95. Nowadays there's lots of morons who think it's "mircing" and insist on using colors and shouting "OMFG!!!!! LOL ROXORS!!!!" all the time.

I prefer IM to this, since then I can use a client such as Miranda and strip away all the pink fluffy bullshit such as animated smileys, shaking windows, etc etc and just get the plain stuff, as well as choosing who I want to communicate with.

Only truly unobtrusive client I've seen. Default behaviour for when you get a message is to change the taskbar icon.I heartily recommend it.. and its Open Source (for those who that matters to)

This is one good reason not to use the official IM clients. ;) Trillian, Gaim, Miranda IM are apparently good (I've only used Miranda IM though). Of course they may not all support *all* the options the official clients do. (e.g. ICQ and AIM and MSN group chat is absent from Miranda IM AFAIK, though others can start a MSN group chat with you)

Or you could use Gaim instead of the official client and not get any ads. You'll also get support for Gaim's plugins, contact aliases, and tabbed IMs, but it doesn't support some of the AIM features like video and voice IM (they're working on it). Also, there are other unofficial clients including Miranda and Trillian. Or you could use an AIM hack like Middle Man (or one linked from their list of other AIM hacks) that remove the ads and add other features like logging.

urpmi gaim works fine with Mandrake 10. Just like pretty much any piece of software you'd want. Try urpmf --summary frozen-bubble for example. For MS platform, I prefer Miranda as it's the lightest IM software I've found. It does just one thing and it does that well. Though, it's pretty much like Firefox -- you probably want to install some extensions/plugins first.

You may want to look into Miranda. It's a GPLed, light-weight, multi-network IM client that's much less of an eyesore than GAIM, and with the rather large number of plugins, is as flexible as you want it to be.

Think of it like Trillian's smaller, sleeker cousin.

I'm sorry, but I've been using gaim exclusively for about five months and I just dropped it today due to its general poor performance on my ancient 450mHz machines. Yeah, I know, you aren't surprised that they're slow. But guess what? MirandaIM runs MUCH more smoothly. I just started using it today, so I haven't found any annoyances with it yet, but boy is it smooth.

And there are no global shortcuts.

All hail Miranda! (on Windows, at least)

Does someone wanna give a quick HOWTO and/or a pointer to a suitably high-level explanation? Thanks.

Miranda is a trillion times better.

This will probably be modded as a troll considering it isn't the common Slashdot opinion, but oh well.

I've used gaim off and on over the past year, (on both Linux and windows) and found that the windows port really doesn't compare at all to the Linux version, and to put it simply, on windows, it's really just a waste of resources.

For all the windows users that can't stand the bloated msn messenger or latest official aim client, I suggest at least checking out Miranda. I was introduced to it a few weeks ago by a long time gaim user (who was fed up with all the inconsistencies and problems with gaim under windows) and have been using Miranda almost exclusively since then. Albeit, it has some current issues with file transfers, but I'm sure that's only a momentary problem.

I honestly can't understand /.'s obsession with Gaim.

It's a great open source project, that's for sure, but it still lacks so many important features.

No global hotkeys? You gotta be kidding me. The logging system is truly awful too, with all those countless directories (the authors claim that this is the best solution to avoid errors in the logging system, but I've seen many better solutions from other programs).

Another undeniable thing is Gaim isn't stable enough. The latest version already locked up on me (on Windows XP) a good handful of times, and some friends claim to have problems with its stability too. Yes, even under Linux -- amazingly, nowadays it's *very* rare to have any application lock up on me under XP. Including other IM's.

That said, I'd still understand all the fuzz if another such project didn't exist. But hey, wait a second, there's Miranda Instant Messenger! A much more stable program, which is also free, and features a huge plugin database that adds a lot of functionalities Gaim can only dream about right now. Including global hotkeys and an amazing logging system...

OK, I know Miranda is Windows-only.. But that doesn't impede us to compare it to Gaim, considering both programs are freeware. So, well, I just think it's sad that Gnome and KDE users have to lean on Gaim for an IM'ing solution right now. If I were still running X, I'd be seriously disappointed with this reality.

Yes and no. IMHO it's up to the end user to decide what their IM needs are, and choose based on that.

Miranda is a fantastic program - really small with plenty of plugins. The interface is much more responsive than Gaim - it's a very lean program.

That said, one thing GAIM can do is provide the ability to chat in Yahoo rooms. Miranda sadly can't do that (to the best of my knowledge).

I have both installed - they are both quality open source programs with very active communities.

Gaim-like programs such as Miranda are overloaded with features, buggy and eat more memory than a standalone Jabber-client, i.e. tkabber.

For Windows Miranda is nice. On Linux I use GAIM -- it works well and is easy to use.

For windows there's Miranda. It supports all major protocols, including Jabber, MSN, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo! and others. Miranda is designed to be resource efficient and easy to use. It uses very little memory and requires no installation. It loads up in just a few seconds on my pc.

I use Miranda as its the only one I found that supports the Corporate version of ICQ as well as the usual other suspects. http://www.miranda-im.org/.

I use Miranda. I like the interface, it uses plugins for protocols so everything is supported, it doesn't chew down loads of memory, and its released under the GPL. I stick with version 0.3.2 though, because I don't like the icons in newer versions.

Yes, its Windows-only, but most of you are using Windows right now anyway.

http://www.miranda-im.org/Miranda - ALL you need.. If GOOG wants to support open IM, they should look at Miranda, all the float none of the bloat.

Try Miranda. a very nice open source multi IM protocol client. Including Jabber, of course.