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.

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 :)

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.

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.

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.