Instant Messaging On Linux

IceFox writes: "In this first installment of a four part series, LinuxOrbit takes a look at AOL Instant Messaging clients available for GNU/Linux. Kaim, Gaim, and the official AOL Linux client are reviewed. It's interesting to note that open source projects are way ahead of AOL in developing a full featured AIM client for GNU/Linux."

Comments

Re:jabber sucks

[Matts]

First off, this is not meant as flamebait, but a general warning - call it a review, of jabber clients on Linux.

We were going to use Jabber on a project I'm working on as part of the application. We've now decided against that until the clients become more stable and more usable.

The server I'm sure is fine. I downloaded a binary from jabber.org and ran it after editing the configuration file. I think its still running.

But the clients were a different issue. On Linux you have 4 or 5 choices. My first try was the Perl client. That actually downloaded and worked pretty well after a very lengthy compile phase (it compiles Tk). But the language it uses is confusing - the jabber client developers have obviously used some of the server jargon in the clients. This made it extremely odd to use. Whereas with AIM it was enter user/password and I was off, with Jabber it seemed more confusing. Plus I didn't know anyone who used Jabber, so I had to try the AOL or IRC bindings. Those didn't work well and/or were confusing as hell.

Next I tried the Gnome/GTK+ client. After realising the dependencies were spiralling out of control I gave up. Nobody should have to update their entire (up to date Helix) gnome install just to get a jabber client running. OK, I'm exhagerating a little. But it was enough to put me off, and certainly not something we could force on our customers.

Then I tried the Python client. That proved impossible to download, but the homepage wasn't exactly encouraging about its functionality.

Finally the one glimmer of hope was the Mozilla client. That installed with just a few clicks and a restart. Unfortunately it didn't seem to support the alternative protocol bindings, so I was stuck not knowing any jabber users.

In short, my conclusion for now for our project (based on the knowledge of our user's abilities) is that Jabber just isn't there yet on the client front, on Linux. Maybe it will be in 6 months or more. For now, AIM is a great alternative, despite the worrys of AOL's control over the protocol.

How about other UNIX builds?

[bjb]

You know, this just points out a nasty little trend that I see in the Linux development world- people who typically develop for Linux are blind to the fact that there are other UNIX systems out there. In particular, I'm bitching about the fact that Everybuddy and Gaim fail to build on Solaris systems simply because the code is written without regard to other systems.

You can say "Well, it says its for Linux" or "GNU isn't UNIX" or some other cop-out, but in reality with these types of programs it doesn't take a lot of effort at the design phase to make it cross (UNIX) platform and still perform just as well.

Before this gets knocked down for being flamebait, I just want to point out that I've identified fixes to 3 open source projects before to make them cross platform and the authors don't respond because "if it isn't linux, they don't care". I can understand if you don't have the hardware to test it on, but at least take a suggestion/patch.

<grumble grumble grumble>

--

Re:How about other UNIX builds?

[RobFlynn]

I don't really have a way to test GAIM building on other machines but from the reports I've received it seems to compile fine when you disable gnome and perl support via ./configure.

---
Rob Flynn

console-based AIM

[mvc]

Any of my fellow X-haters out there (I'm assuming there still are some people on Slashdot that don't like slowing down their systems with things like Gnome) may be interested in knowing that there are a number of console AIM clients out there. The best one I've found is mfaim, which is available on the libicq project page at Sourceforge.

--Moss

This is a .sig.
Now there are two of them.

GAIM is the best

[cansecofan22]

I have been using GAIM for a while now and I like it a lot more than the official AOL version of AIM or the AOL java version of AIM. It has all of the normal features but it also includes your other IM clients into one package. You can use AIM, Yahoo and MSN Messenger all in one client. It really works well. I would definetly have to say it it WAY ahead of any other AIM client availible.

Re:AIM is nice when it works

[RobFlynn]

A lot of the crash problems have been weeded out. If you find anymore please send me some bug reports. 0.11.0pre4 was released while I was on vacation (after I finally got the server to let me upload it :-P). Enjoy =) By the way, We've added Jabber and Napster support as well. =).

---
Rob Flynn

Everybuddy!

[rich22]

Everybuddy is an instant messaging client for Linux which can connect to not only AOL's toc.oscar.aol.com server, but to ICQ, Yahoo!, and MSN's chat services all at once. It displays very nice status information, allows multiple accounts to be logged on at once, can use ispell to help correct typos in a non-intrusive way, and will log all conversations by Contact name. This means you can talk to "Natalie" on AOL and later on ICQ, then either use the view log function to read past conversations or grep the log file for a specific term if need be. The latest version has other great features, such as assigning sounds or a command to be performed when a contact name comes or goes offline. It comes with sound support, has a very nice look and feel, and is IMHO the best choice in IM clients for linux at this time.

Yahoo IM has native linux and freebsd versions

[Ars-Fartsica]

They are located here.

jabber

[_ganja_]

What about jabber, that can interface with AIM, ICQ and most other instant messager systems. Its open source and it's native protocol is also an open standard. There are different frontend availible and it supports most platforms (Linux - various i.e. KDE, Gnome..., Windows, Newton, mozilla, MAC, JAVA, BeOS, CE etc..). Most of these clients are released under the GPL however, some are under closed licenses.

There also working on secure communications by the way of PGP/GPG and a web interface. Some clients already support encrytion though.

There is also a commercial server avilable with more features than the open source version but at least this project has an Open source server that didn't have to be reverse engineered.

Its seriously worth a look if you currently have to run different IM clients to keep in contact with people on the various networks. One place to keep all your contacts and the server make communicating between them transparent.

www.jabber.org is the opensource part and sponsored by www.jabber.com, these guys sell the comercial server.