Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Instant Messaging On Linux

Posted by Hemos on from the i-freakin'-hate-IM dept.

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."

2 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. How about other UNIX builds? by bjb · · Score: 5
    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>

    --

    --
    Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
  2. Everybuddy! by rich22 · · Score: 4

    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.