Slashdot Mirror
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."
Younger people ?
As far as I'm concerned, there are a lot of people out there using instant messengers... my friends, my mom, my dad, people from work, people at college... it's not just teens using instant messengers, it's a huge community using them.
And yes, I personally miss features like displaying which song you're currently listening too, and heck, since the latest MSN version I can't even see their "mood" anymore...
And yer yer, I could just ask them, I know... it's just that my friends seem to have a hell lot of fun using MSN, and I'm just happy I can finally show people my MSN icon... I seem to be missing a lot of the fun :)
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
...is why we use GAIM to communicate in our company. (Well, except the garbage file transfers.) We have a Jabber server that supports encryption and use that for all of our in-house messaging. This is important as we are a geographically distributed team, we need a secure, reliable chat mechanism to collaborate quickly and easily on code. We don't want or need all the garbage that comes with of IMs, and the fact we can link to other services in GAIM makes it our one stop shopping solution for IMs when we *do* need to talk to someone with a more mainsteam IM.
:) :( smiles. But for a corporate solution, GAIM + Jabber makes a lot of sense and I would hate to see it become the playground that MSN has become.
Of course, we are professional developers who don't need to send flash animations, pictures or even more than the basic
Sig under construction since 1998.
And file transfers with non-gaim clients ?
The Raven
Sounds like whoever packages gaim for your distro is a moron. gaim's developers can't be faulted because someone else is screwing up the packaging.
I've never had any problem with upgrades or installations of gaim on any of my systems (Gentoo, and I used to use RedHat until 7.3), including the Windows port.
gaim blows away AOL's standard AIM client in terms of UI cleanliness, ease of use, and features. How the hell is it that the AIM protocol supports aliases for screen names (i.e. foobar43289342 displays as "John Smith") but only third-party clients actually support it? (i.e. aliases ARE saved on AOL's server with your buddy lists, but AOL's AIM client is about the only client out there that DOESN'T show them).
gaim also lets me strip out all color/fontsize changes from people's IMs. Some people have REALLY annoying color defaults.
gaim starts far faster than AIM.
There is one thing (and only one) that AIM handles better than gAIM, and that's when people use nonstandard character sets in away messages. gAIM bitches about a buggy client, AIM will display the away message, even though some characters will look like junk. I only see these away messages once or twice a month though.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I think its ironic that this article made Slashdot at the particular time. Gaim's summer of code had projects ranging from Yahoo Whiteboard support, to better file transfers, to group editing of text files/images/music. Also support for audio VoIP. There is also a webcam plugin in the works for gaim as well [though I'm uncertain for which protocol(s) they are aiming at. It is for exactly these features that gaim hasn't released a new version in much longer than their normal development cycle. In perhaps a few weeks most of these complaints [as well as many other advantages like dbus and fixed perl interfaces] will be irrelevant.
Gaim's tabbed interface IS great. There are many things about Gaim thats great, but it's interface is too much like AIM and there are a couple of annoyances such as: 1. You can't see your own picture in the chat window. You have to go through two dialogues before you can preview/change it! 2. Avartars/Icons belong on the left of the contact list - not the right where someone's long MSN name forces it off view with a scrollbar.
I know I should be making these comments on the Gaim bug/feedback forums, but I know for a fact many of these requests get ignored. I actually think the fonts look nice in Gaim, despite what someone else said on here during the previous IM topic.
It just may take a while to convince developers to implement the 'annoying' MSN features so that the rest of the users out there can come on board.
No, Gaim does not support skins. If you really want to know the good reasons for this design decision, you could check out the developers words on the topic.