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Linux Instant Messengers
mrAshley writes "This article talks specifically about the antiquated state of the even the best Linux instant messenging software, and generally about the need for software developers to be mindful of younger people, as their social attitudes towards software are going to be much more influential in than any moral or financial consideration.
Simply put - People are communal. Don't make a person who wants to use Linux have to leave behind a method or style of communication."
Gaim and kopete both have all the functionality of the major IM clients. Gaim is available for both windows and linux and also seems to get protocol fixes and other bugs patched much more quickly than the commercial equivalent, trillian...
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Gaim is just trying to follow the look of the rest of the linux desktop experience.. antiquated and generally pretty ugly!
At least gaim isn't as fugly and bloaty looking as the default trillian install. The best, cleanest, most feature-capable IM client I've used is Adium for OS X (which I believe uses gaim's IM library). It gets out of my way, isn't all flashy and has all the things I want (on the fly spell checking, history in new windows, etc).
(No, this isn't one of those "DUDE! JUST USE OS X! LINUX SUX0RS", I'm just stating my opinion.)
No you didn't read the article, they have heard of gaim:
Can you connect to the MSN Messenger network using Free operating systems? Sure you can. There is Gaim, there is Kopete. Are they attractive? No, they aren't. Their interfaces are terrible. Moreover, all you can do with them is write basic IMs. Bye bye overbloated and stupid nudge and Flash sequences. Just the text ma'am. Display picture? Well, it sort of works, but that's all. File transfers? I can swear that you're a lucky guy (girl) when it works. Usually it doesn't, resulting in embarrassing 'Sorry mate, I'm using Linux, you know and, well, could you mail me this picture instead?'.
yes, I'm a command line nut, but my favorite is actualy bitlbee, available at http://www.bitlbee.org/. It's an irc gateway for AOL, ICQ, jabber etc.
Don't save Windows XP! http://www.petitiononline.com/jjw1xp/petition.html
Is it possible to use an AOL IM account with Gaim and talk with people on Jabber? Is there any IM client that can do that? Thanks.
Um. Yeah.... That's the entire point of Jabber. If you want to use an AOL account, use a jabber server that has an AIM transport. Same with Yahoo! and any of the others.
This whole complaint for the article is just stupid. Yeah, using linux really cuts you out from being able to communicate with people what with there only being a crapload of chat clients for it of which tkabber, Gabber, PSI and GAIM are only a few of the some 30 Jabber clients for the platform.
You put Cygwin in your Windows PATH right? There are warnings pretty much everywhere not to do that. It breaks lots of applications, not just Gaim, and is caused by Cygwin DLLs being incompatible with anything non-Cygwin.
centericq + screen FTW
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
...will also get you onto Google Talk, which is basically Google's Jabber server.
.MAC chat and not Jabber. Yes, the Tiger version adds Jabber functionality, but my clamshell iBook can't run Tiger. (The cutoff is native Firewire which the first version of the iBook didn't have.)
It won't do voice chat, but at least you can do IM chat. This is better than the iChat which comes with Mac OS X Panther, which can only do either AIM or
Gaim's good on both Linux *and* Windows. The Windows port is solid. And it's Free Software.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaim
Features:
Plugins:
Gaim supports plugins for RSA and GPG encryption, as well as Off-the-record messaging.
See GAIM plugins: http://gaim.sourceforge.net/plugins.php/
More info about GAIM: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=GAIM
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
File transfer. Secure (128bit encrypted) conversations. Inline image support. Stability (I've seen GAIM crash more in a day then I have seen real AIM crash in three years). Audio chat. Video chat. Need more?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
god! have you seen the date on that article?!!?!
"Written by special contributor Stéphane Rieppi on 2005-01-15 04:36:21 UTC"
that isn't even funny! heh.. anyway, since january things have come a LOOOONGG way in the IM world. take a look at the CVS of aMSN if you'd like more info - it's got webcam, doodles, nudges and more (but there might be things i don't know about, i haven't been keeping track of it lately)
But, a cautionary note, if history serves, what Microsoft is doing has the petina of old tricks. Should they manage to climb to the top and snuff out other IM services the way they've snuffed out other competitors I predict they once again will begin charging for what once was free. Please help me out here. I am wracking my brain trying to think of a case where Microsoft started charging for something that was once free after they snuffed the competition. Let's see ...
Operating Systems, nope, they never were free (though the service packs and updates have always been free)
IE, nope, free (at least until the government intercedes on our behalf and makes us buy it)
Media Player, nope, free (at least until the government intercedes on our behalf and makes us buy it)
Outlook Express, always free, still free
Office, nope, never was free - though the price has DROPPED significantly as competition has disappeared (remember Lotus, WordPerfect, Ashton Tate, CorelOffice, ...)
PhotoStory, nope, was $29 as part of media pack, but now it's free
Media Encoding tools, nope, was $100 as part of Video For Windows SDK, but now it's free
How about games?
I can't think of a single game Microsoft charges for that was formerly available for free.
How about developer tools?
MSDN, nope, still a pay-for service, though now there is a very nice alternative for free online
SDKs, nope, some used to be pay-fors but now they are all free
Visual Studio, nope, still a pay-for, always was (bundled with MSDN subscriptions though)
SourceSafe, nope, always was a pay-for (bundled with MSDN subscriptions though)
Let's go back further in time ...
Disk Compression, nope, used to be a pay-for but now Microsoft bundles it for free in all OSes
Disk Defragger, nope, used to be a pay-for but now Microsoft bundles it for free in all OSes
Paint, Calculator, Notepad, HyperTerm, etc. etc. always free (and worth every penny ;-)
Please help me out here. There MUST BE at least one example! I mean, after all, it's "common knowledge" that this is a predatory Microsoft practice.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I don't think this is a valid argument at all, I've found that installing (open-source) software on my debian boxes usually takes less clicks and keystrokes than installing their commercial counterparts under RedmondOS xyz. Look here.
It will happen.
The two biggest things I've noticed lacking are Nudges and voice/webcam stuff.
Nudges and can more than happily live without.
Voice/webcam support was attemted with an offshoot called gaim-vv (vv == voice and video). But that project has officially been laid to rest with a final note implying that some of the developers will try to merge the work into a later release of gaim.
There are also a lot of pluggins for gaim to support everything from rss to encryption. If you really desperately want a feature, leave a not on the "feature requests" thread of the sourceforge project page on sourceforge. Or if you're desperate and skilled, try to write it up yourself ... this is open source.
Additionally, he should track what Microsoft does and doesn't do with is "personal information," as outlined in Section 5: quoth the 'Soft:
In particular, "(3)pretect[ing] the rights, property, or interest of Microsoft" leaves a lot of wiggle room for listening to fresh ideas coming across their pipes (unlike AOL, who specifically state that whatever you type is theirs!).
Finally, he should continually check the Terms of Service; they "may change this contract at any time. You must review this contract on a regular basis." (Section 2). So what they say now isn't necessarily what they'll be saying later. Remember also that, like any business, it's nothing personal, just business. Their goal isn't to make you happy; it's to make money. If people get happy, it tends to give them money, but so long as most people are happy, a few people can get screwed, particularly if they can wriggle out of it in the courts and the courts of public opinion.
And finally, one-click videoconvferencing systems exist for Linux. For example, skype runs on Linux (again, check the ToS!), and also Gnome Meeting, amongst others.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Sadly for Linux, Adium is written in Cocoa, which means it's GNUstep or nothing off of OS X - and even then porting is not necessarily a walk in the park.
aMSN has the custom emoticons feature. You can download it at http://www.amsn.sourceforge.net/. You'll need Tcl/Tk to run it.
For Aiur!!!
Tools->Preferences->Conversations->Tab placement:
Top
Bottom
Left
Right
Left and right are vertical tabs.
Um. Yeah.... That's the entire point of Jabber. If you want to use an AOL account, use a jabber server that has an AIM transport. Same with Yahoo! and any of the others.
Actually, the whole point of Jabber is to be an open-source, well documented and extensible message transfer protocol. Server-side transports are there primarily to lower the barrier to entry.
If you want a full-feature MSN client, you can use Mercury. It is written in Java, so it is cross platform. I had the same issues as you, until I found Mercury.
Qxe4
Not only that, AdiumX taps into some Carbon libs, too, and uses WebKit to draw the message logs. There's no equivalent to WebKit for GNUstep yet, so that really puts a damper on the port work.
Many distributions use package managers to install/remove/upgrade software; in order to solve inter-package dependencies, most of these distributions use meta-applications that run on top of the package managers.
E.g., on Fedora, rpm is the package manager, and yum is the meta-app that runs on top of it. If you want to install, say, php-mysql, you just run:yum will go ahead, pull the php-mysql package from the Internet, figure out the dependencies, download the missing ones, figure their dependencies as well, and so on until all dependencies are solved. At the end, you're presented with a list of actions that yum will take ("I will install such-and-such packages and update such-and-such. OK? y/n")
You never even have to touch rpm per se - yum does that for you.
It's really pretty easy. No more dependency hell since yum and similar programs became more popular.
I've noticed that the stability issues might be in the library code, because the popular multi-service IM apps on OS X (Fire, Proteus, and Adium) all use them, and all are rather buggy.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
Try gnomemeeting on Linux. Also, there's gyach & gaim-vv, both of which support voice & video
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand
Excuse me, but that's just plain ignorance. I know of a hell lot of people who really hate windows and would love to switch over to Linux, but it's the little things like these that hold them back.
MSN video chat won't get ported to Linux for the simple reason that it's a Microsoft-proprietary system. If people can't deal with that, that's too bad; they should stay on Windows.
Incidentally, it works both ways: my favorite software isn't available on Windows. In fact, I find Windows kind of a wasteland in terms of software: lots of crappy shareware apps, a few decent but overpriced commercial stuff, and then Microsoft monopoly-ware. Thanks, but no thanks.
I know this is a little offtopic, but if you're using a linux box and can't decide on a IM app, you can always point someone to using http://www3.meebo.com/. This uses ajax so that you can IM online through port 80 (especially useful when any of the IM ports are being blocked at work).
I use bitlbee, an IRCd that talks to the major IM networks in text format. Access this in irssi (any tty irc client will do). Leave it running 24/7 on a server in a dtach (or screen) instance. Attach to it from anywhere on earth. See in the logs the time your buddies came and went, and any messages you missed. Chat from one machine, move to another and continue the conversation. At home on my LAN, I run the trigger script, and have it play sounds on all my PCs in the house when I get a message.
Lots of new features in the new upcoming version of gaim. Read the list yourself. It's mouth watering.