Gaim Releases Version 1.0.0

bfree writes "Congratulations to all in the gaim team as they release for download version 1.0.0 (changelog). For those who don't know what gaim is, you could read the full answer on their site but for the lazy: 'Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.' Gaim is also the 2nd most active project on Sourceforge and the 4th most popular on Freshmeat and seemingly all round #1 Free IM client!"

Comments

gaim

[twenty-exty-six]

Gaim is easily one of the best open-source apps for non-tech savvy users. Without gaim (and Firefox) I wouldn't have been able to convince some of my friends to try linux.

why 1.0?

[MoOsEb0y]

There isn't a lot of difference between 0.82.1 and 1.0. Why have they decided that this should be version 1.0?

Re:why 1.0?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Personally, I think the first version that's released should be v1.0. All of this "using v0.2934.d.342.beta" crap is freaking stupid. *cough* Firefox *cough*.

Yes, I understand "it's not ready yet". If people are downloading it and using it, it's ready.

Re:why 1.0?

[mdfst13]

The first version should be 0 -- programmers should always count in computer numbers.

Seriously, Firefox may be as ready as any IE release, but that does not make it production software; it just means that IE has never been QAed properly. Fractional (below 1) versions make version 1.0 meaningful. What should we follow the MS scheme: version 1 is utter junk; 2 is better but still lousy; 3 is mostly usable; 3.x and higher are the first versions that are expected to succeed? That's just version inflation.

on the mac...

[appleLaserWriter]

Should I prefer it to Fire?

Re:on the mac...

[oboylet]

Becaue as another poster pointed out, there's no readily available mac binary for gaim right now.

If someone wants to experience gaim on os x the answer is AdiumX. While I might not have answered the question that directly in the previous post, how's this for two reasons:

I prefer AdiumX because it has a more simplistic, elegant design than Fire does by default. Your buddy list takes up less screen real-estate in AdiumX, for example. Also, though they are no real use to me, someone might want the extra protocols that gaim/adiumx supports that Fire doesn't.

Just a few thoughts.

Re:on the mac...

[Trillan]

I tried Fire, I tried Proteus, and I tried Adium. For multi-protocol, I use Adium.

But on a day-to-day basis for 99%+ of my chats, I use iChat. I like the simplicity, the stability, and the way the menu works. Make no mistake, it's a one trick pony... but it does that trick very well... much better, I think, than Adiun.

I am starting to think that both skins and customization are highly overrated. What's needed is a single good skin. The ability to custmoize is nice, but far less important than having a good skin already there.

Congratulations

[afra242]

I've been using Gaim since the late '90s. I even donated some beer to them way back in the day - it takes me back to my college days.

Thanks guys - it's amazing how much Gaim has expanded. I check regularly for a release and have pushed many people to check it out.

Too heavy..

[thewalled]

gaim lost out to miranda (http://miranda-im.org) for one of my customers.. his problem gaim is too heavy / resource intensive for their workstations (here in india most workstations at still stuck at celeron ~700 or so + 64 MB ram and run 98SE).

miranda on the other hand works quite nicely, btw we use jabber only (no msn/yahoo/icq/oscar support).

no mac binary

[Leers]

from those of us who don't regularly compile our own software, I don't think gaim qualifies as mac compatible till someone bothers putting a mac binary on their site.

Video/audio sound support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Gaim 1.0... Good...

But, what I _really_ need is video/audio support for MSN, Y! and AIM. I am asking for this for 2 years now, no one in the OSS community has managed to integrate something like that to a multi-IM application.

No, Gnomemeeting is not the same, it is not compatible with the 99,9% of the IM world. It is a conference app, I just need integrated video/audio for MSN, Y! and AIM.

my gaim experiences

[bmajik]

i remember when i was in school and my primary workstation was a used IRIX machine.

I went through the pain of getting gtk built on my machine, and actually emailed the gaim people (just 2 guys back then, iirc) some trivial diffs to make gaim not die on irix.

Back in school i think i complained about how linux-centric f/oss software was (nothing written by a linux user ever clean compiled on irix... and not often on solaris..) and gaim was certainly not stellar in this regard..

Now i'm less antsy about such things.. and despite not really like the "penguin pimps" attitude i seem to recall the gaim crew having,
AOL AIM client for Win32 is so bad that installing Gtk32 and Gaim seems like the path of least resistance :)

It's nice that there's a non-AOL AIM client. I'm an IE, Media Player, and XP user, but even I can't stand AOL's installers and apps :)

Work and offshore developers

[cerberusss]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Gaim related to offshore work yet. I've been using Gaim extensively to work with the offshore part of the team. Works like a charm. It's not so intrusive as the phone, and it also circumvents language barriers. I'm not exactly Betazoid and sometimes have a problem understanding their English, instant messaging neatly circumvents this.

Now you could say this about any instant messaging client, but Gaim supports a nice bunch of protocols and VERY regularly brings out a new update. There have been a number of problems with Yahoo in the 0.7x series, but these have been gone for long now. I plan on using it for a LONG time to come.

I've wanted to use paypal to donate, but they don't support that; instead they sell stuff on eBay but I find that too much of a hassle.

Gaim rules.

[BrookHarty]

I use Gaim, but a few annoying things.

Normal windows popups when re-connecting, so if you are in the middle of typing, it gets the normal windows treatment of stealing focus. I hate focus stealing popup windows.

MSN re-connects alot, need to hide that...

Be nice if you could change your IM preferences under gaim, most you have to use the real client.

Forced alias's change when the user changes their nick.

Can't change themes without re-installing.

But for an all 1 in one client, its the best.

Re:Gaim rules.

[Anonymous Coward]

Be nice if you could change your IM preferences under gaim, most you have to use the real client.

You can already

Forced alias's change when the user changes their nick.

Ughh how are you supposed to know what the user changes their nick to? You are asking for gaim to read the mind of someone who has changed their nick?

Can't change themes without re-installing.

You can.

multiple column buddy list?

[chocolatetrumpet]

Am I the only one who doesn't like scrolling through my buddy list?

Most applications, when maximized, will utilize the entire available area to display information. Gaim will leave 90% whitespace. This is weird.

Does anyone want the buddy list to spill into multiple columns feature, or is it just me? Sean said it probably wouldn't happen. :-(

Re:multiple column buddy list?

[chocolatetrumpet]

ps view this demo to see how it is weird.

just downloaded it

[Cynikal]

i always assumed gaim was just another aim client, never realized it did msn and icq as well... this story convinced me to try it out, and yeah its pretty cool... just needs one little added option... options > preferences > text size > readable.. aside from that i like it.

O/T: Windows 98 and outsourcing

[Anonymous Coward]

gaim lost out to miranda (http://miranda-im.org) for one of my customers.. his problem gaim is too heavy / resource intensive for their workstations (here in india most workstations at still stuck at celeron ~700 or so + 64 MB ram and run 98SE).

This is an annoying problem for my company. As more of our customers outsource to India, we're getting demands* to support running our server software on Windows 98. We know there are problems with the low level networking on W98, but finding a workaround isn't worth it to us, because who the hell is going to run a real server on 98, especially now it's end of lifed?

* why is it that Indian developers always come across on forums as if the rest of the world is put there to solve their problems for them?

GAIM has opened a lot of doors

[Erik Hollensbe]

I'm not a big fan of GAIM the client.

However, I'm a huge fan of libgaim.

Does anyone remember mICQ? They were the first people to reverse engineer the ICQ protocol. Until then, you were forced to use the seriously crappy Java ICQ client if you wanted to use it on anything but windows.

micq however, IMO of course, was a crappy text-based program that had a horrific interface. Really, I would much rather use my IRC client for ICQ than stick with this thing.

And now I can. See, the micq guys caught on and released libicq or libmicq, I can't remember at this point. I imagine a good portion of this code is still in libgaim.

The point is though, that others took libicq and applied their UI design skills and made very useful programs out of it.

And this is what I get in libgaim.

I'm not a fan of how you have to contort gaim or work on a specific system with specific plugins to keep windows from popping up on you while you're typing. (I will admit it's been a while since I used gaim, so this climate may have changed)

However, if you wanted the best support for the various networks out there, GAIM is the way to go.

libgaim allows me to get rid of the (IMO again) clunky interface and replace it with something else. On the mac, my workstation, I use AdiumX, but before I used Fire (no link, sorry). Both are libgaim-based which means that the advances in this library (especially recently as YIM and MSN seem to change their protocols hourly) are almost instantly integrated into the front-end of my choice. The 'hive mind' mentality here is very effective.

I *really* wish that more people working on protocols would do this - right now, several HTTP libraries are available but developers refuse to settle on one - I hope apr solves this once and for all. I don't want to worry as a developer about the idiosyncracies of apr, libwww, and others when developing a web app.

Object brokers are another example. If I install GNOME, KDE, and any other app that uses an ORB, chances are I have many ORBs on my system - for what reason? Those "extra" features that the developer can't live without. I know GNOME and KDE are finally working on making it cross-platform (in the GUI sense), but this provides another good example.

Do what you like at the GUI or application level - but normalize the libraries (and make MORE of them that meet specific, unique needs so they can be chained together). This gives the developer a reasonable notion of stability at the library and API layer, and the user a reasonable notion of functionality. Also portability, security, and enhancements come quicker and cheaper because more eyes are looking at the same code. Fix a buffer overflow? Well, you've fixed it in 20 programs instead of one. Doesn't that make everyone happy?

Sorry for the rant. I just feel the need to talk about important topics on my mind that no one will listen to or care about because they're buried at the bottom of a slashdot forum. :)

Gaim 1.0.0

[Perdition]

Tried it, liked it, kept it. It's about the nicest thing I can say about software.

the #1 ?

[moro_666]

one thing that does them "all", never becames the #1, at least not yet ...

while trying to be effective in all possible ways the config has been getting quite big, but at the same time, some options are grouped together so tight, that you lose either one or another feature that you would like to see.

when i use irc, i wanna have all the "business" in one windows, with different tabs, and no "alters" about any messages, when i do msn or yahoo, i want different windows, on different virtual desktops even, and i do want the popupping effect.

there are actually tons more examples why having it all in one does destroy the features that it would have, when it'd be separated

i use amsn for example while trying to work with people on msn. why ? cause it's far more easier to configure, it works better, looks better, supports stuff that gaim doesn't.

don't get me wrong here, i do use gaim sometimes, but only when i have to yahoo someone, otherwise i keep my fingers away from it, cause it's clumsy and need's yet some more tuning in config/look until you can really say that's an possible alternative to other more advanced clients.

i'll keep my fingers crossed for gaim, as it seems to have a promising future, but a lot of work does have to be done first.

Gaim log analyzer

[RainbowSix]

Here's a half-baked log analyzer that I wrote in a weekend. It works with GAIM log files for the AIM protocol format up to about version .72 (I run it on .59.9, the last GTK 1 version).

Here is an example of its output on my primary username.