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."

Comments

gaim works for me, but loses ground from here

[yagu]

I think gaim does a pretty good job, and I've actually converted lots of friends to gaim with no negative after taste. And most love the tabbed interface for multiple conversations in one window. It's nice also to have multiple protocols all available in the one application. My parents now chat with multiple people, in multiple environments, and they're not even aware that's happening. No more splaining that they have to start the yahoo messenger if they want to talk with Uncle Duane.

There's also the huge value add of no advertising.

But, I seem never to be able to upgrade gaim, at least not easily. I always have to do an rpm upgrade with the Force option because of "conflicts" with other gaim packages. And the last couple of new releases of gaim won't even install with "Force".

So, for my money, gaim comes close. Depending on the user, I've found many are okay using gaim.

As for the "state of the union" in Windows, with the recently announced merger of the Yahoo and MSN protocols (as in, freely communicate with each other), it does appear Microsoft is making its move to get closer to their tipping point to dominate the messaging market. They have some interesting features, none that I can't live without, but probably a good draw for the "hip" young crowd. I find most of the described features annoying, but then, I come from the old BSD/Sun "talk" days. Heck I guess I even come from the old Unix "write" days (get out your history books).

Let Microsoft add the fluff. 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. Or at least start charging for features that used to be free but have become addictive to their target demographic. (Hey, little girl/boy, want some streaming video with your chat?)

Re:gaim works for me, but loses ground from here

[Seumas]

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.

Re:gaim works for me, but loses ground from here

[hpavc]

centericq + screen FTW

Re:gaim works for me, but loses ground from here

[ajlitt]

I can hear it now (apologies to any elderly nerdettes out there):

"Grandma, simply unpack the tarball, run ./configure; make, sudo to root, then make install.

C'mon, don't unpack it in your home directory! Don't you store all of your source-built apps somewhere?

No, Grandma, you forgot to install the header packages for GTK. But it's so easy! Why do you have to make this so difficult?!

Fine. Go watch your stories. I'll have it finished by the time Matlock is over."

Re:gaim works for me, but loses ground from here

[LaughingCoder]

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.

Re:gaim works for me, but loses ground from here

[RWerp]

Does you grandma install Windows software? I suppose not, so stop bitching about how it is hard for her to install Linux software. She would have enough trouble with other OS-es as well.

Re:gaim works for me, but loses ground from here

[scotch]

Use a non-rpm distro and you will upgrade it easily.

FUD. Something is probably screwed up with his machine. RPMs work just fine when used with tools like yum or apt-get and with reliable/well-maintained package repositories. Gaim updates fine on my Fedora Core 4 machine, for example. Other package formats aren't some magic bullet that will prevent bugs, misconfigured repositories, dependencies errors, buggy repositories, package errors, etc, from causing you problems.

Am I missing something?

[dfn_deux]

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...

Younger people ?

[leonmergen]

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 :)

Re:Younger people ?

[leonmergen]

Linux users are doing just fine, and the last thing we need is for Linux to be more like Windows.

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. They try to use all kind of thingies over MSN with me, including webcam conversations, but it simply doesn't work for them. Then they're like "oh, yeah, Linux, right?".... and it's things like that that hold them back. Sure, it's not the only thing, but it's the picture as a whole that we draw about the user experience under Linux... sure, it's nice, fonts are prettier (in the opinions of many), but that just doesn't do it...

Not a very substantial "article"

[AEton]

Summary:
Gosh, I really hate the Windows Messenger 7 UI. It's so ugly. I'm going to say something unsubstantiated about vendor lock-in here and never mention it again, because I want to sound hip to teh Lunix.

Everybody in the entire continent of Europe uses MSN Messenger and most of us just call it -- wait for it -- MSN!

Did you know that Gaim sucks? Look at Firefox and Openoffice.org! Those are much cooler than Gaim. Did you know that ten year olds won't use Gaim because it isn't flashy enough? Lol gaim is so ugly! :( There'll never be Lunix on the desktop!

Kthx.

--Stéphane Rieppi lives in Belgium and is majoring in sociology at the University of Liège. He has a strong passion for Free and Open Source computing and is working on a thesis about Free and Open Source software seen from a sociological viewpoint.

Form over function?

[kingsqueak]

No thanks. I'll take the simplicity of gaim to accomplish the given task; relaying a text 'conversation'.

If you go and bloat it up, for the love of God, be sure to leave an options dialog to disable all the crud so I don't have to be beaten with it.

Everything he rails against...

[Godeke]

...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.

Of course, we are professional developers who don't need to send flash animations, pictures or even more than the basic :) :( 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.

What about voice ?

[vlad_petric]

And file transfers with non-gaim clients ?

Re:What about voice ?

[cab15625]

File transferes to MSN and Yahoo! used to be painfully slow ... to the point where people would cancel on the other end because they lost patience. This seems to have improved a LOT in the recent versions, so if you still don't get good file transfer ... upgrade.

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.

Re:What about voice ?

[gujo-odori]

I think "officially laid to rest" is stronger than the actual situation. The Oct. 7 announcement states that there will be no more gaim-vv releases but that they are working on merging with gaim and code will (not might, but will) be added to gaim.

IMO, that's how it should have been done from the outset.

Veering back toward the the response of so many posters, both here and in the comments for TFA, gaim is pretty good at the basics (better than either AOL's or Yahoo's official clients) and IMO isn't ugly, either. Kopete looks nicer/more Mac-like, but some of its functionality is goofy. I love KDE but use gaim for my IM b/c I just can't stand Kopete.

The trouble is, the basics aren't enough. The main point of TFA, really, is "Where's the voice and webcam support?" This is a major stumbling block in open-source IM, and it doesn't affect just young people. I'm in my early forties and Linux has been my exclusive desktop OS for over five years. My wife is in her thirties and would also be a Linux user except for one thing: Yahoo Messenger, and specifically the voice/video features, is her number one app (ahead of even email) for keeping in touch with her family and friends overseas. Any platform that doesn't support that doesn't work for her, and that's why we have a Win2K box (Yahoo Messenger on Mac doesn't support voice, either, or I'd buy her a Mac).

It's all about the applications for a lot of people, and IM is the only area that immediately comes to mind where there is really a huge gap between capabilities of open-source clients versus proprietary ones. People can point to gaim-vv or to gyach-e (Eeeeeeuuuuuuw! Have you ever looked at the source code for that?! I feel the nausea coming on again just from thinking about it. I and one of my staff members tried for three days to get it to build, without success; eventually I ran a binary RPM through alien), but both of those projects are really in their infancy WRT both functionality and reliability. I've tried both and eventually concluded that I was better off just living without those features until they are more stable (they have cute little tricks like making a 2.5 GHz P4 with a gig or RAM go to 100% CPU utilization and stay there when receiving video. This happened multiple times and my only out was to kill X; charming).

Need a good office suite? OSS has you covered. Browser? Take your pick. The only proprietary browser that's as good as the OSS offerings is Opera, and it also runs on Linux. Email? Same situation? Groupware? Maybe a little rough around the edges, but we're basically there. Security tools? The list is long but distinguished. SQL databases? PostgresQL and MySQL are two of the most popular in the world, take your pick. Development tools? There are probably more OSS tools than proprietary ones available these days, and whether you prefer vi, (X)emacs, or a full-blown IDE, OSS has something for you. This list could go on and on, but I think you all get the point.

However, turn to IM, and OSS is years behind the times. The author of TFA had it right. I know none of us really like hearing that there's something OSS doesn't do as well as proprietary software, and we especially don't like hearing that proprietary is kicking our asses in some area, but sometimes it's true. This is one of those times.

Having a world-class IM, with voice, video, etc., is crucial for OSS at this juncture. I hope people who are working on major OSS IM clients like gaim or Kopete are reading this thread and also read TFA and realize how important this is.

And yes, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. If what is needed is to pay gaim developers to get this done in a reasonable time frame, I will donate 50 bucks, which is more than I've spent on software in years. I hope everyone else who wants advanced voice and video features in OSS IM will also be willing to pony up whatever they can afford to get the job done.

OSnews strikes again.

[labratuk]

I thought "Funny. I haven't seen much inflammatory bullshit recently. I wonder if OSnews have got back into gear again."

Then I noticed the link. Brilliant.

Re:Gaim?

[pturpin]

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?'.

Not a problem with gaim there

[Andy Dodd]

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.

I loved that quote "we call it 'MSN'"

[Rob the Bold]

we usually call it MSN for short here

When I was in high school, while discussing music with a foreign exchange student, she announced: "In France, we call Bruce Springsteen 'The Boss'".

Re:Standardized

[tehshen]

Gaim is just trying to follow the look of the rest of the linux desktop experience.. antiquated and generally pretty ugly!

Of course it's trying to look like the rest of the linux desktop, it uses the same widget set! Sure, you can use one of the High Contrast themes or Simple or somesuch, and Gaim is going to look ugly that way because that's what you've chosen it to look like.

Completely different widget sets (MSN Messenger, WMP, Office, usual win32) on the screen at the same time? That is ugly.

Re:Gaim?

[nagora]

Gaim does not support personalized MSN emoticons,

Score one big one for Gaim! That's more than a "don't need", that's a "don't want".

TWW

Gaim...

[MsGeek]

...will also get you onto Google Talk, which is basically Google's Jabber server.

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 .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.)

Gaim's good on both Linux *and* Windows. The Windows port is solid. And it's Free Software.

The article misses the point

[Remillard]

After RTFA, I think the author is missing the point of instant messaging. Strangely enough, it's right there in the name:

Instant: adj.

      1. Occurring at once; immediate:

Messaging: tr,

      1. To send a message to.

It's not instant video chatting, instant flash advertisements, instant voice communications. They are messages. At this Gaim and Kopete work very well indeed. I don't even use the standard MSN, Yahoo, and AIM clients on my WinXP box. It's Gaim and it does everything at once. As far as aesthetics go, Gaim is about as lovely as anything else. Kopete looks as great as you can make KDE look (which is pretty damn good.) In fact, I occasionally turn on the color cycling plugin on Kopete and get lots of positive comments and folks wish they could do that with their clients (just move to Linux!).

The only spot where I think the author is possibly on-topic is file transfers. More often than not though, this is a function of network firewalls and port forwarding. If there was a mode where Gaim/Kopete could self discover an outside IP address and use UPnP port requests, then I'm sure it'd work phenomenally in our household.

Adium X

[ChrisF79]

I'm a mac user and I love Adium X and would love to see it get ported to Linux. It's such an easy program to customize, very nice interface, and absolutely free. Just seems like a great fit for Linux in my opinion.

A Lame Gaim Claim

[digitaldc]

"Their interfaces are terrible. Moreover, all you can do with them is write basic IMs."
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaim
Features:

• Tabbed message windows for easy switching of conversations Accounts option allows user to log on as many different accounts at once as desired

• Transparency support via a plugin for conversation and buddy list windows (only under Microsoft Windows)

• Aliasing nicknames by real name of user

• Grouping different buddies that are really the same person into a "contact" [2]

• Logging conversations and messages supported [3]

• Buddy Pounce feature pops up notifications or plays a sound when a user changes status [4]

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

Gaim Summer of Code

[zephos]

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.

Antiquated Ideals with Linux as a Community

[bleaknik]

Am I the only one who understands where this article is going?

Linux is a wonderful, efficient, relatively secure operating system, but damned, the UI is fugly on almost every distro. Even the "perdy" distros have UI deficiencies.

Why does this matter? It works, it's functional, right?

Short Answer... Yes... Long Answer... No.

In the ideal Linux world, everyone has discard MS Windows, and they are strictly using open source software... There is no concern over quality of software, no concern over usability, and no concern over closed protocols, software, and formats.

That's not the case. Most of the world uses Windows, and that's just the way it is. Windows does offer something that Linux doesn't offer in that sense... a relatively consistent (*sigh*) user interface, a relatively attractive (*sigh*) visual style, and relatively easy-to-manage (*sigh*) suite of software.

Point is, how do you tell an inexperienced Linux user to install a different visual style?
How do you tell an inexperienced Linux user to install new hardware (think something without pre-compiled Linux compatible drivers)?
How do you tell an inexperienced Linux user to do most every day things?

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this comment, but I have used Windows, OS X, and Linux. Plain and simple Linux is not the easiest to learn from a new user standpoint.

Sure, I'll hear the argument that once you learn, you'll be fine. Explain that to the old persons in my family who don't want to learn. Explain that to the young persons in my family who don't understand why they should learn Linux.

I am not trying to say the Linux needs to copy every Windows / OS X feature or functionality, in fact I'm quite opposed to this. Linux has a powerful kernel that's being underutilized by a copycat interface.

Why do the creative minds of the Linux community insist on duplicating Windows. Linux != Windows. Create a new interface. Move into a different direction that what we know now. Here's a novel idea. Forge a new, easier, more efficient way to use a computer.

Of course, the underlying principle is still this... GAIM is not MSN. GAIM is merely trying to duplicate how classic MSN/AOL/Y! looked and felt. It's been done. Move on.

I'm not saying that GAIM needs to recreate the annoying Screen Shake or whatever it's called. I'm not saying GAIM needs to recreate MSN/AIM/Y!/ICQ/Google Talk/etc. Do something original with it. Give me a compelling reason to use it. Give me an application that's not bloated (*coTRILLIANugh*). Give me something more intuitive (*coADIUMugh*) but unique (*coDOESN'TEXISTugh*).

The Linux community as a whole is stuck in this antiquated mindset. Let's move on. It's time to change. Linux doesn't need to be just for elite, make it available and usable (keyword) to the masses.

But, what do I know?

Gaim too focused on looking like AIM

[astralbat]

I use MSN Messenger while at work and Gaim at home 100% of the time. It's very annoying when someone tries to nudge you or send you a wink and you have to make that horrible excuse. It's not a good thing, especially when I'm trying to trumpet the Linux platform.

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.

Editors? Editors???!!

[Eil]

From TFA:

What happens when the corporation anybody seems to love to hate, namely Microsoft, release a killer app and of makes it free (as in dollars), but, of course, keeps its source jealously closed? And worse than that, use it to maintain a strong lock-in to the Windows platform?

OSNews: We don't need no stinkin' editors!

Re:Overlooked something

[jmt(tm)]

And if it doesn't support skinning, why hasn't anyone written skinning support into Gaim yet?

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.

Kopete has a bad UI?

[Doctor Crumb]

Not sure what version of Kopete he's using, but anything from the past year or so is pretty as can be and incredibly useable, and getting moreso with each release. It has very nice support for MSN avatars, fully customisable notifications, meta-contacts, tabbed chat... and they fixed up all of the bugs that made it hard to use quite a while ago. I agree that the file transfers and webcam capabilities aren't there, but that's not the UI, those are extras.

Re:Wrong... This is why open source is so great!

[doubledoh]

How many windows installers do you have an option to do it by hand when the installer won't work??

Umm, whenever I used a windows installer, it works, period. I've NEVER encountered a windows installer that didn't work. Ever. The program might suck, but it installs and novices knows predictably WHERE it installed as well (and without using "whereis" commands).

I am a Linux user...but I don't think anyone can argue that installing packages that are not in your sources list is easier than downloading and doubleclicking on a "install.exe" file in windows. But I DO enjoy your point about shell scripts that can do it all for you (which is really what windows installers are). It would make alot of sense if linux programs could simply be downloaded to desktop, doubleclicked on, ask for your sudo password, then go the the install motions AUTOMATICALLY detecting your disto, configuration, etc...and possibly asking if you'd like a shortcut installed to your app menu, if you want to make it the default program for a particular set of filetypes and so on...just like windows installers do. Linux can learn alot from windows when it comes to installation ease, and obviously in turn, windows can learn from linux when it concerns security (and making sure users really know what they are installing).

Until Linux packages are as easy to install as install.exe's, Linux loses big time in that respect. There's no debate there. I argue that it is THIS problem alone that really holds linux back from the big time, not instant messengers. If instant messengers were easy to install (and worked without odd hacks and forum digging), they would improve exponentially because their audience would have increased expontially as well to justify the extra development.

Linux is headed in the right direction...but the persistant folly of installation and upgrading woes is heavy plow holding it back.

IM != IM-sp33k.

[Grendel Drago]

Not everyone who uses IM tools uses IM 'tard-speech. Too many do, though. I work at a helpdesk, and we use IM to escalate issues to coordinators and whatnot. It's easy to log in conversation form, it's lightweight (being able to do things quickly and easily is a big plus, and since we use "Slowtus Notes", email doesn't fit the bill)... it works really well for us, filling in the gap between phones (in which you steal all of someone's attention for a short time) and email (which can get filed and forgotten way too easy).

The coordinators do ask us "did u get the tkt?" and "can u review?", though. And I thought people only talked like that in school.