Gaim 2.0.0beta1 Released

BerkeleyDude writes "Gaim 2.0.0beta1 has been released! Here is the changelog. New features include account status, away messages, etc, UPnP and NAT traversal support, new UI for buddylist, chat windows and preferences."

Comments

and what about the passwords?

[Bananatree3]

To me, it seems like their stance on not encrypting passwords is a backwards. Having a non-encrypted passwords policy does not make sense to me, as it leaves things wide open.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Monkelectric]

To me, it seems like their stance on not encrypting passwords is a backwards. Having a non-encrypted passwords policy does not make sense to me, as it leaves things wide open.

Encrypting the passwords would mean the key would have to be stored in the program. The key could be retrieved from the program. This is *EXACTLY* how the DVD encryption was broken. It didnt work there, and its not gonna work here.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[wfberg]

Actually, if you read the page you're linking to, you should really find it makes perfect sense. Either you store the password in such a way that you need user interaction to retrieve it, or you use some sort of obscurity approach which is worse than nothing. As it is, gaim stores it in plain text, yes, but there's nothing to keep you from either not storing the password OR using file-system or file based encryption - which is actually perfectly feasible. If you're using windows XP for example, just right-click the accounts.xml, properties, advanced, encrypt. (The encryption key is linked to your XP login password)

On the other hand, yes, some sort of OS specific hooks to make this easier would be sensible. For example, using Mac OS's "keychain", or Windows XP's "secure storage".

Still, even using these built-in encrypted storages only protect against a very very short list of threats.

Now, if you just stored accounts.xml on a hard-ware level encrypted harddrive that needs a smart-card and a passphrase to work, you'd be getting somewhere..

Re:and what about the passwords?

[lengau]

How about what Kopete does? encrypt the password with a key that the user enters (another password, essentially). Doesn't that make more sense anyway, since the user has the ability to store passwords like that?

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Anonymous Coward]

at which point it would be easier to just enter your password.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[ichigo 2.0]

Using a password to hide a password? I'm sure there's lots of valid reasons to do that, but it still strikes me as a bit silly. You'd still have to remember the first password, and most people use the same password for multiple accounts/services. :)

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Pneuma ROCKS]

The problem remains. How are you going to store the first password the user entered? It is impossible to have an encryption system where the key (or the key to the key, or...) is not somehow accessible. The only way to avoid this is to have client/server interaction, where the server holds the keys, or store the key in an external location, such as an USB drive. None of these seem feasible for a simple standalone chat application.

But, anyway, even if the key is obtainable somehow, it doesn't justify the lack of encryption. At least it makes it a *little* more complicated to obtain passwords from the user. Having them in plain text is just plain stupid (no pun intended).

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Ed Avis]

The sane way to do it would be to encrypt the GAIM password with the user's GPG public key or their SSH public key. Then the user only has to remember the passphrase for their keypair, which they know anyway.

(FWIW, I'm with GAIM on this; storing 'encrypted' passwords which are really just obfuscated is an attempt at security through obscurity, and just as doomed as all other attempts like that. Better to make it obvious what is going on than attempt to hide behind a veil of supposed security that really offers no protection.)

Re:and what about the passwords?

[orangesquid]

Uh, actually what I tend to do is create an encrypted partition on my disk, move all sensitive plaintext there, and create symlinks.
I enter a password on bootup, and all my data becomes unlocked... the kernel stores my key in kernel memory and never swaps it out to disk, of course (although I like to have an encrypted swapspace, too)

Re:and what about the passwords?

[ahg]

Personally... I'm in favor of using ROT13 encoding :)
It will be as effective in blocking the casual snooper, but equally useless in protecting the password from a determined individual. It also has the added benefit of there being no password to store ...hehe...

Re:and what about the passwords?

[rspeed]

The Keychain system in OS X is the perfect solution for this problem. It's encrypted, but the key isn't stored in plaintext on the system. Instead it (by default) uses the same password as the user and the keychain unlocks automatically when they log in. Alternatively, the user can create a different keychain with a different password which they need to enter when the password for AIM or whatever is requested. This is what I do, and it's a rather well-designed system. The only caveat is that the various pieces of software need to use it.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[m50d]

They could encrypt the passwords for all your accounts using one password, which saves a bit of remembering. Or even better, use kwallet :).

Re:and what about the passwords?

[m50d]

On the other hand, yes, some sort of OS specific hooks to make this easier would be sensible. For example, using Mac OS's "keychain", or Windows XP's "secure storage".

And under linux, kwallet!

Re:and what about the passwords?

[rolosworld]

well... if you use linux + kde + kopete, you can use kggp.. its kind of an encription service for kde.. its a nice idea, but its a pain in the arss, since you have to login on linux and then login again to access your encripted stuff. In principle its nice to have your stuff encripted from the admin. But I hope they use, someday somehow, my account password instead of make me login 2 times in a row :-S

Re:and what about the passwords?

[CastrTroy]

Using Linux is protection enough from those casual snoopers. Casual snoopers wouldn't even know where to find the file.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with MD5 or other hashing algorithms? It seems reasonable to store the hashed password and compare it with whatever the user inputs.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just frigging remember your password and type it in in every time like everyone else, sheesh

Re:and what about the passwords?

[baronvonwalz]

Or you could be smart and not save your password...:shrug:

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Lord Ender]

Finding the key for DVD decryption required some skill in reverse engineering. Finding a key in an open source program would be 100 times easier. Just look at the source code.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you read the page you're linking to, you should really find it makes perfect sense.

No, you're risking increased exposure. While the idea of using filesystem protections to secure the password is a good one in theory, it fails to provide layers of security, something that is nearly always a sound security principle.

If a system is compromised with some other avenue of attack, the unobscured nature of the stored password gives the attacker a password. While we are supposed to have different passwords for every system, we all know that reality is often far different.

This happened at my employer recently. Our system uses NTLM for most authentication, including Jabber. From a single compromise and the nature of the gaim stored password - instant access to anyone's accounts that stored a password with gaim (well, supposing that their password had been written in an appropriate place - it's not quite that simple).

Yes, yes, any obscuring that did not require a password would be a schill. It could be cracked with relatively little effort. But when a compromise has happened, there's a big difference between someone instantly having access to all accounts and someone having to do some work for each.

So while I agree - obscuring stored passwords does not increase security in any formal sense - it seems silly to deny that an extra layer of protection, capable of slowing an attacker, is useful.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[NemosomeN]

Thank you sir, you have no idea what is going on. The issue is that when you check "Save Password," you password is saved in plaintext. If they hashed it, and required you to type in your password... Well, might as well just take out the checkbox.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME has a keyring system as well, but it won't work for GAIM because GAIM also runs on non-GNOME systems.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[lengau]

The point is that then you can have different passwords for all the different services you use and still have to remember only one password. For example, say I had the password "password". Then, all of my passwords would be a random string of characters unless I desperately needed to access it from a public terminal. So that way, I only remember two of my passwords (my email password and my master password). The rest are triple-encrypted on my computer and written down on a piece of paper in a safe.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[lengau]

I realize that it's impossible to be extremely secure, but when you're running a computer that your whole extended family has accounts on, you want something more than just plain text, even if you do have permissions set not to allow anyone else to see your passwords. I wasn't saying just encrypt it with the password, but what I am saying is to store it in a better way than plain text, even if it means security through obscurity. Ultimately, I'd like my retinal scan to be my password. Nobody sane is gonna steal my eye for my password.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[bitspotter]

Right; This is also what firefox does (when you turn it on) with the "Master Password" for remembering website login passwords.

That's a case that's potentially justified by large numbers of passwords (I have dozens). I also use gaim with about 20 accounts, so it would be a good idea there, too. Most users, however, will probably only have one or two, so trading two passphrases for one may seem like too much hassle for the added security (for some).

I compromise by using encfs to encrypt my ~/.gaim/ directory (among others), but that has its own limitations. Other users (including root) can't read the files, but any app running as my user can, while the fs is mounted.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[EvanED]

Which ignores what is in my guess the biggest use of saving the passwords: to avoid having to type it.

I don't have Gaim, AIM, etc. remember my passwords for me because I don't want to be bothered; I know all my passwords so I can sign on elsewhere. I have it remember them so that when I log on it signs on automatically.

If you encrypt it with something behind another password, you either have to store THAT password in which case we're right back where we began or you lose that application.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[jsebrech]

Ultimately, I'd like my retinal scan to be my password. Nobody sane is gonna steal my eye for my password.

You overestimate the amount of sane people in the world.

This is why I reject biological scans. Nothing I could ever have is that sensitive that I would want to risk losing an eyeball over it. Besides, a password you can change when compromised (or even before it gets compromised), but when someone manages to duplicate whatever biological trait you use to identify yourself, you're screwed (which together with cloning tech might actually turn out to be a fine way of copying bio identities).

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Anonymous Coward]

you need cryptography 101

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical, in one and the same thread I learn that gnome has a keyring system, and KDE has kwallet. And I'm pretty sure they don't cooperate.

I swear, pangea would sooner reform than an acceptable level of cooperation would arise between KDE and GNOME.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[assassinator42]

Why not store the password hash? I know the AIM client at least stores a hash for a save password, and sends that during login. Can't GAIM do that? Granted, that won't stop someone from taking that and logging in to your account, but at least they couldn't change your password or anything. I'm not sure if they could view your mail or not. There's an auto-login thing, doesn't appear to work in firefox, but I'm not sure about IE.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[jmazzi]

If your that concerned, just dont save your password.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[suwain_2]

But, to me, the point of the password is to keep someone looking through files from stumbling across it. It's like hiding Christmas presents under the bed--it's trivial to circumvent, but it prevents truly-accidental discovery.

People are thinking of encrypting the file as the equivalent of putting it in a vault so no one can get it. I see the encryption more as a "Please Keep Out" sign, where anyone can disregard it, but most people will respect your wishes.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[dtfinch]

If someone has access to my gaim passwords, they already have access to the rest of my computer. Besides, unless I want to enter a master password each time I start gaim, the best it could do is scramble them a little. Some of the passwords can be pre-hashed, depending on the protocol, preventing the recovery of plaintext passwords, but someone who got a hold of those hashes could still take over your accounts.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Lehk228]

you can do one better yourself under windows XP use NTFS encryption on the accounts XML file.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Lehk228]

under windows XP GAIM stores it's files in D&S/User/application data/.gaim

any "keep out" is just as easily placed on the pricate directory is is stored in. NTFS permissions will not allow others on the system to read the files without administrator access and NTFS encryption will prevent anyone lacking your login credentials from accessing the data files.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[dytin]

It will slow any competent hacker only a few minutes at most. There are ample free programs that allow you to crack the password for the official versions of AIM, and MSN. And, anyways, for AIM, you should definitely NOT be using a password that you use for anything else, since it is sent across the the network unencrypted (well, its slightly obfuscated, but by no means encrypted) and it is trivially easy for an attacker with a packet sniffer to sniff your password.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Lehk228]

most wouldn't know to check D&S/user/application data either, they would look in /program files/gaim and give up

Re:and what about the passwords?

[LordoftheWoods]

You're always going to need that double login, else it will not be secure from the admin. The first login is easily bypassed by the administrator. The second is not. You can't eliminate the first, since its not under your control. The second is under you control, but eliminating it also eliminates your added security. The 2-login problem is not solvable without integrating the encryption in with the OS's authentication, like with Windows XP. I don't see it happening too soon.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[m50d]

I have my whole /home on a luks/cast6 partition, I'm not worried about such things, but I think file encryption is still too hard for the "typical" user. Wheras everyone understands having account passwords.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Trejkaz]

Indeed. KDE does this too, and in fact, when people say that Kopete supports a master password, what they really mean is that it's using the main password store of KDE.

In fact, the inability of Firefox to access the KDE password store is the main reason I now use Konqueror. That, and the way Firefox chooses not to remember some forms, depending on the weather or perhaps the phase of the moon.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[EvanED]

Nobody sane is gonna steal my eye for my password.

There are a lot of people who aren't sane

Re:and what about the passwords?

[xenocide2]

If you dont want people digging around your files, perhaps you should set permissions appropriately?

Re:and what about the passwords?

[croddy]

or, perhaps more appropriately for GAIM, the GNOME Keyring.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[icypyr0]

Actually, the latest AIM clients are able to store your password in the form of an MD5 hash. However, theres a catch here. Your "password" is not needed to log onto the AOL Oscar service, rather only your MD5 hash which you send to the server during a challenge/response handshake. The system is actually fairly secure against man in the middle attacks, and secure only to a point from a local attack. With the hash you could directly log on with your own client, or possibly brute force the hash and get the original password back so you could log in easily with the AIM or other client.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[online-shopper]

speak for yourself, all traffic between my jabber server and my client is encrypted via SSL, and much of the traffic is encrypted end to end via gpg

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some argue that binary is documented better as comments in .c files may be misleading and confusing and you still have to transform what you see into what the cpu will be executing :D

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Lord Ender]

Is that because they are really good at machine code, or because they are really bad at c?

Re:and what about the passwords?

[lengau]

Do I overestimate the number of sane people or underestimate the number of insane people? But you do have a good point there.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[lewp]

Just don't store your password in Gaim. Why is that so hard?

Re:and what about the passwords?

[rspeed]

I'm a bit surprised that there isn't a plugin or for that.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[lasindi]

But, to me, the point of the password is to keep someone looking through files from stumbling across it. It's like hiding Christmas presents under the bed--it's trivial to circumvent, but it prevents truly-accidental discovery.

Anyone looking in your ~/.gaim directory is already "looking under your bed." No one will be using your computer and "accidentally" come across your personal settings in your home directory. If you want security for your passwords, just do 'chmod 700 ~' and you'll be the only one who can see your passwords.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Craig Davison]

You don't have to store the global Gaim password (assuming that's what you mean by "first password"). It (or a hash of it) just needs to be used as a key to encrypt a plain-text list of the other passwords.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Anonymous Coward]

Higher security means more inconveniences. What do you want, convenience or security?

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Ed Avis]

If you encrypt it with your ssh public key, then yes you have to enter the passphrase for that at login. But you might well be doing that anyway, if you often use ssh. If not, at least it's only one password to enter rather than several, since many different applications (not just GAIM) can all use the ssh keypair to encrypt sensitive things. There is also a PAM module to authenticate you on login with your ssh passphrase, so you'd only type one password in total from turning the machine on to using your applications.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Ed Avis]

when you're running a computer that your whole extended family has accounts on...

Um, file permissions mean that they can't read the configuration file from your home directory, unless you deliberately allow them to by making it world-readable.

Perhaps you are worried that other family members would find a local exploit, get root on the box and then be able to peek at your files? Anyone with the ability to do that could easily undo any password obfuscation that GAIM might do. Obfuscating the password doesn't give you any security beyond normal file permissions.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Crayon Kid]

Or even better, use kwallet :).

That will not happen. Why would an application built over GTK+ and Gnome pick a random application from another, alternative, desktop environment, and base it's functionality on it? Let me say it again: it will NOT happen.

The workaround, however, is to have this master password thing come out as a FDO standard. Once all kwallet's everywhere use the same specs and same files, then you'll be allowed to complain about why Gaim or Firefox or any other Linux application doesn't use it.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[m50d]

Funny though, it only ever seems to be gnome's standards that become FDO standards, and it's always KDE that changes to meet them.

away messages

[sonixtwo]

phew...about time i can set away messages...now the never ending are you there? messages will stop!

Re:away messages

[slavemowgli]

The ability to set away messages is not new - not at all. I don't know what the submitter was smoking, but maybe he didn't understand that part of the changelog that says that the code dealing with away messages (as well as other parts) has been completely rewritten.

Re:away messages

[cratos]

Yeah and the new away message system is the worst i've ever seen. What the hell were they thinking? What is the deal with the two dropdown boxes at the bottom? And now you have to go all the way into a separate window in order to use your saved messages? Someone please tell me that i've hugely overlooked something!

Re:away messages

[broeman]

I found it pretty anoying, that everytime I wanted to set an away message manually, I had to create a new one. Now I just use a generic one, which is set automatically. I have about 30 different away messages, which I cannot choose from. Funny enough, I do have the ability to choose them, if I for example use BOTH MSN and ICQ, but not ICQ alone.

Darwinports update for gaim?

[ubiquitin]

It looks like the version of gaim in Darwinports is still 1.5. Will be interesting to see how fast this gets updated. ;) Didn't know that the Mac version of gaim has a variant with support for MSN in it.

Re:Darwinports update for gaim?

[Tiberius_Fel]

For GAIM functionality in OS X you can try Adium X It doesn't do IRC (by design choice), but the functionality for a lot of protocols is there.

(Also, IIRC, Adium X does use libgaim.)

Re:Darwinports update for gaim?

[chrisgeleven]

You are correct. Adium X is basically gaim with a pretty GUI.

Best IM software on OS X, by far.

Re:Darwinports update for gaim?

[dcclark]

You are correct. Adium X is basically gaim with a pretty GUI.

No. Adium X uses libgaim, which is the protocol-handling code from Gaim, and that is it. The majority of the app -- all of the interface and logic that doesn't explicitly talk to servers -- is original work. Even some of the protocol-handling code isn't libgaim -- for example, Bonjour (i.e. Rendevouz) support. If you try it, you'll find some significant feature differences from Gaim as well.

Re:Darwinports update for gaim?

[HeroreV]

Is there any chance of Gaim ever using wxWidgets or something similar?

Re:Darwinports update for gaim?

[EvilSporkMan]

Actually, libgaim isn't really available yet - the Adium people have hacked up the gaim code to get the protocol stuff out. Gaim still hasn't finished its core/UI split...I think I was told that was set for Gaim 3 last time I asked in #gaim.

Re:Darwinports update for gaim?

[bitspotter]

This Gaim 2.0 beta supports Bonjour, btw. I just added it to my accounts list (haven't tested it yet, but will soon).

Re:Darwinports update for gaim?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't looked at the adium source, but if their GUI code ties directly to the gaim protocol code, it would be a poor design and the man would deserve your mockery. As it stands, I highly doubt that you are right to belittle the adium team's efforts, since they have indeed delivered the best chat client on any platform I've used (I'm not exaggerating, this is my honest opinion), and that is no small feat given the ample competition.

So does i...

[Anonymous Coward]

support Jingle? Didn't see that in the changelog...

No support for video camera

[WhatsAProGingrass]

I still do not see any support for my webcam. I like gaim, but I still have to use other programs fot chat via webcam.

Re:No support for video camera

[slavemowgli]

gaim-vv is being merged back into the trunk, so at some point, 2.x should have video support as well.

Re:No support for video camera

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, working with the Gaim project leads can be a exceedingly unrewarding task. The work on gaim-vv for video and voice support was ignored, dropped, reaplced with sub-standard code for the Google (Talk) overlords and then programmer was insulted (although there may now still be a chance of something still being integrated).

"Death of gaim-vv" November 11th, 2005 http://www.livejournal.com/users/bleeter/

Re:No support for video camera

[mushroom blue]

actually, this _was_ the case. the Gaim-vv devs were all ready to merge into CVS HEAD, but Sean Egan changed all the hooks for voice and video without any notice, all so google's voice chat could be integrated. this means that all the gaim-vv work was essentially for naught, and it seems that the devs have given up merging in the support. the lead gaim-vv dev updated his blog with the situation, and others like Christian "ChipX86" Hammond chimed in with their personal horror stories working with Sean Egan. Egan has alienated most of the other GAIM contributors, who refuse to work with him anymore. sadly, it looks like Kopete will still be the only IM client for linux with cam support.

Re:No support for video camera

[MechaStreisand]

I looked at the sourceforge page, and it says that they're just giving up on gaim-w. If Sean Egan is such a tard and so many developers won't work with him, why don't they give up on gaim instead, and make their own fork and tell everyone that theirs is the one with voice and video support? It seems to me that that would be a good plan at this point...

Re:No support for video camera

[TheoMurpse]

I think I speak for all gaim users when I say
GOD DAMMIT FUCK THAT GUY I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR VIDEO SUPPORT FOREVER!

Seriously, it's quite disheartening to see FOSS fail in such a way -- gaim is the big kid on the block and they can't even get someone to integrate video support. Fuck Sean Egan. Fuck him right in the ass.

Re:No support for video camera

[Crayon Kid]

[..]Gaim-vv devs were all ready to merge into CVS HEAD, but Sean Egan changed all the hooks for voice and video without any notice, all so google's voice chat could be integrated[..]

This is taken SO BADLY out of context, to the point it could be considered FUD. The entire story ran on OSNews and both parties made their position clear, in public. There are even links to the actual discussion on the dev list. Here's the original piece and Sean Egan's response.

I wonder what it would take to make people happy, short of a miracle. Here we have a guy who has working code for voice, and he's willing to commit it even though he's working for Google now (which, incidentally, I think says something about whether he's any good or not). And he's not some alien as he's made out to appear, he's been a part of the Gaim team for quite a while, even wrote a Gaim book.

So he does it, and we'll have voice in Gaim ASAP. He even did it in such a manner so the switch to GStreamer can still be made later when it matures. What else do you want?

Re:No support for video camera

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh because the GPL doesn't allow that! Only the BSD does.

-Microsoft employee, trolling department.

Video chat with Yahoo chat people?

[MMC Monster]

Big question for me - Does it support video chat with people on the Yahoo! network? It's a major deal-breaker for most of the people I administer windows and mac computers for. :-(

Re:Video chat with Yahoo chat people?

[Zontar The Mindless]

My daughter lives with her mother a fair distance away from me, I only get to see her 2-3 days a month, and I'd quite like to be able to video-chat with her from time to time.

Any objections?

(Pardon me for coming off all snarky, but some of us are interested in using Internet technologies for purposes that have nothing to do with prurient gratification.)

Re:Video chat with Yahoo chat people?

[sjvn]

No, no video yet. It was on the list. The gaim-vv project, which was to bring a voice and video framework to GAIM, was to have been merged into the 2.0 line, but there's no sign of it in this release.

I was really looking forward to this too.

Steven

Re:Video chat with Yahoo chat people?

[AkaXakA]

Well said.

Re:Video chat with Yahoo chat people?

[m50d]

Then use Kopete instead.

Re:Video chat with Yahoo chat people?

[Lobais]

From http://gaim.sourceforge.net/:

On a related note, the gaim-vv project--which aimed to offer a framework for voice and video support in Gaim--is being merged back into Gaim proper for hopeful incorporation into Gaim 2.0.0. This will be used to support Google Talk's voice as well as MSN and Yahoo! webcams.

Re:Video chat with Yahoo chat people?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I agree, I'd love to be able to video chat with Zontar The Mindless's daughter, and until gaim allows this I'll stick to wasting the resources/screen space running multiple clients, or use Bitlbee inside of my normal remote irssi section-- As long as you don't really support anything above basic messaging, why even bother with a gui when something like irssi handles that fine?

Re:Video chat with Yahoo chat people?

[harves]

For now, try NetMeeting/GnomeMeeting. They actually work quite well though are both a little buggy. Gaim should have video/voice support in the near future anyway.

Re:Video chat with Yahoo chat people?

[Anonymous Coward]

For a non-technical person, setting up NetMeeting (especially from behind a router/firewall) is very complicated. My mother definitely wasn't able to manage it. On the other hand, MSN Messenger is as simple as plugging your camera in and pressing 'send webcam'.

Re:Video chat with Yahoo chat people?

[Thing 1]

Actually, it has everything to do with prurient gratification; just, simply, after-the-fact. ;-)

Been running this all night.

[Tezkah]

I have been running this since last night and I must say, it is a nice release.

Two things I have noticed that impress me the most:

1) They finally fixed tab chatted, so if someone on your MSN list decides they want a 20 character display name, their tab wont take up 20 spaces on your chat window. Instead it truncates it and evenly spaces the tabs.

2) When you type/recieve a message you see it scroll in from the bottom of the message window. Really neat effect when you are typing, as it looks like it zooms from the text input field into the conversation window. Nothing major, but neat.

All in all, its a pretty good release.

Re:Been running this all night.

[x_codingmonkey_x]

Did they by any chance fix the non-transparent icon bug for KDE system tray? I love GAIM, but the icon (even though a PNG with no background) appears with a white background on my transparent system tray. Thus, I am forced to use Kopete (which isn't that bad either, but I prefer GAIM).

Re:Been running this all night.

[travail_jgd]

Are you using the latest version (1.5)?

I'm running KDE as well. I changed the color of my desktop, and the GAIM system tray icon retained its previous color. I closed GAIM and restarted, and the icon background was properly colored.

Under normal usage, it's never been an issue for me.

Re:Been running this all night.

[Abjifyicious]

Thus, I am forced to use Kopete

Oh, of course. Because having a program's icon show up with a white background is such a horribly crippling bug that you just can't possibly use gaim.

Re:Been running this all night.

[krappie]

1) They finally fixed tab chatted, so if someone on your MSN list decides they want a 20 character display name, their tab wont take up 20 spaces on your chat window. Instead it truncates it and evenly spaces the tabs.

WOW. All tabs should be like this! This is my main problem with x-chat. Awesome.

Re:Been running this all night.

[SirTalon42]

Try enabling transparency in the Kicker and you will notice how it doesn't change. I'm using 1.5 and KDE 3.5 and the GAIM icon isn't transparent (unlike all the other icons in the system tray).

Re:Been running this all night.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I submitted an SVG version of the icon to the devs awhile back. Looks nice at any resize (though doesn't use a proper drop shadow yet, no gaussian support in inkscape) and has alpha transparency background.

Check it out. (128x128 submitted to the kxdocker project)

Re:Been running this all night.

[mattwarden]

They finally fixed tab chatted, so if someone on your MSN list decides they want a 20 character display name, their tab wont take up 20 spaces on your chat window. Instead it truncates it and evenly spaces the tabs.

They also fixed this in the buddy list. Before, I had one buddy with a name like asdfljasdlkfjasldkfjlaskdfjasdfjklaksdjflkasdjf and I had to have my buddy list really wide or I would get a horizontal scrollbar. Now it will truncate based on your buddy list width.

Re:Been running this all night.

[x_codingmonkey_x]

Don't get me wrong, Kopete isn't bad, it's actually very nice, but I prefer GAIM. Sure it's not a crippling bug, but I want my desktop to look good.

Re:Been running this all night.

[r3m0t]

You just needed to right-click on them in the buddy list to set an alias. :)

Re:Been running this all night.

[thephotoman]

1. OH THANK GOD! I hate that aspect of MSN. In fact, I find it to be lacking as a service in general.

2. Yeah, neat effect. However, I want GoogleTalk support/the Gaim-vv merge first.

And because I can stick this in, I've got a screenshot gallery of the new version, as it regards changes.

Re:Been running this all night.

[admdrew]

...glad to see someone's ganking Firefly :D
It's a stellar show.

Re:Been running this all night.

[thephotoman]

I knew I should have blurred out that part of the image.

But yeah, it is a great show. Hence the fact that it won the right to live on my hard drive.

That's a _feature_?

[Anonymous Coward]

* Added support for sending (with the /nudge command) and receiving

What possible use could something like that have other than to piss people off?

Re:That's a _feature_?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does a nudge do, anyway? I mean, besides piss people off.

Re:That's a _feature_?

[TMacPhail]

I really, really hope that receiving these can be disabled in preferences. Or at least have them do nothing more than add a line of text to the chat. None of that shaking the window around.

Re:That's a _feature_?

[houseofzeus]

If you need a client where you can disable nudges try MSN 7. Oh wait...

Re:That's a _feature_?

[scarlac]

That's actually what it does.

This is what I received with gaim beta when i was sent a nudge:
(13:02:48) David McNally just sent you a Nudge!

The window didn't shake or make me dizzy by any other means. However this was on a Windows XP. I am writing an assignment that requires me to use Windows ATM, so I can't say anything about Linux yet.

Re:That's a _feature_?

[Anonymous Coward]

Might be annoying on gaim, but it sure will be useful on Slashdot. Imagine if you could kick Taco in the butt each time a dupe or slashvertisement is posted? Or just an idiotic article that they don't know wtf they are talking about?

encryption

[ltwally]

And it still doesn't support AIM encryption. The only way to have a secure IM with gaim is to talk to another gaim user.

I still don't understand why their developers chose to do this. One of the few things that is right with AIM is the secure-chat feature. It's fairly easy to set up, and its very secure.

Re:encryption

[Bodysurf]

"And it still doesn't support AIM encryption. The only way to have a secure IM with gaim is to talk to another gaim user.

I still don't understand why their developers chose to do this. One of the few things that is right with AIM is the secure-chat feature. It's fairly easy to set up, and its very secure.

Because:

1. AIM's encryption is closed-source and proprietory. How it works would have to be reverse engineered.
2. GAIM doesn't natively include ANY encryption support and doesn't want to. Stuff like that is to be done via plug-ins. Bothering the GAIM developers about something that is supposed to go in a plug-in will get you nowhere.

Re:encryption

[davie]

Gaim offers two ways to conduct secure conversations over AIM: the gaim-encryption plugin and the OTR plugin.

Re:encryption

[cortana]

How do you know it's very secure? Because AOL tells you so?

Re:encryption

[ltwally]

"AIM's encryption is closed-source and proprietory. How it works would have to be reverse engineered."

True, to an extent. While there is no official API to their encypted oscar sessions, that I know of, you would not have to reverse engineer their client: simply record an encrypted chat conversation's packets.

And, as luck would have it: this was done a couple of years ago. I don't remember the exact details, but it was pretty simple: AIM uses each clients' digital certificate to set up a private key, and then wraps the entire message in a signed data block (using AES). All-in-all, it looks to be a pretty clean and simple implementation.

Re:encryption

[ltwally]

Though this is not the most comprehensive article I have seen on the topic, a basic primer of AIM security for IM developers is available here.

Re:encryption

[ltwally]

"How do you know it's very secure? Because AOL tells you so?"

Of course not. I know it's secure because I've read up on it. Google around a little.

If you'd rather not, then I'll give you a short overview: when both clients have a digital certificate, it will use those certificates to generate a private key. From that point on, AIM encrypts the entire message (headers and all) with AES.

From a programmers point of view: this should not be terribly difficult to implement in other clients (indeed: trillian-pro supports it), and it is as secure as the digitial certificates being used are. (So make sure you have your own certificate and not some cert that 50,000 other people got off www.aimsecure.com. Go to www.thawte.com if you want a good digital certificate for free.)

Re:encryption

[Surye]

So write a plugin!

Re:encryption

[cortana]

I'm sorry, I assumed this was some proprietary and undocumented feature of the official AIM client, rather than a third party addon.

The www.aimsecure.com site is empty, BTW. I assume you meant aimencrypt.com?

Re:encryption

[m50d]

And it still doesn't support AIM encryption. The only way to have a secure IM with gaim is to talk to another gaim user.

Not true - the OTR plugin is compatible with Adium and can be used with any AIM client via their proxy. I agree it's not as widespread as it should be, but it is a standard way of doing things.

Re:encryption

[daliman]

Why is it "supposed to be done via plugins"? If it were included by default, then more people would use it. I have friends that do use Gaim, but are too lazy to install the gaim encryption plugin; if it were already there, it's very simple to enable it.

Re:encryption

[aleander]

If people are too lazy to install a plugin then they are too lazy to properly secure the keys. Therefore, there's no real reason to use encryption when conversing with them.

Re:encryption

[PCM2]

Right. Like the guy said, the only way to conduct secure IM with GAIM is to talk to another GAIM user. Or, alternatively, to talk to somebody who's running the OTR proxy, which seems like an ugly hack and, last I heard, is still very beta.

Re:encryption

[javabsp]

It's not that the developers chose not to implement AIM encryption by design, the fact is that all of them have a job, and they do whatever out of whatever time they have.

Re:encryption

[arodland]

AIM's encryption feature really isn't as hot as you thihnk it is. PKI with AOL at the root? No thanks. Off-the-record messaging has a design that's actually been thought-out and designed from the bottom up with the needs of an IM client in mind. It's also quite stable, and it works for anyone who runs Gaim or Adium or uses Windows, OS X, or any decent Unix.

Oh, and did I mention it's protocol-agnostic?

And for anyone who's wondering, gaim-otr should be able to interoperate with Gaim 2.0 shortly after (or perhaps shortly before) its release; I've been betaing a patched-up version of gaim-otr against gaim CVS for a while now with no issues.

Re:encryption

[labratuk]

...and its very secure.

What? How do you know? It's closed & proprietary. You have no way of verifying its integrity. How do you know AOL employees aren't sitting at the head office giggling at your conversations?

You're just taking their word for it.

Re:encryption

[ltwally]

"What? How do you know? It's closed & proprietary. You have no way of verifying its integrity. How do you know AOL employees aren't sitting at the head office giggling at your conversations?"

*sigh*

Before responding, it'd be nice if you took the time to research your viewpoints. You don't even deserve a reply... but I'll give you one anyways.

With AIM's encryption method: each client must have a digital certificate (PKI) installed (I, for instance, have a 2048bit RSA certificate). The AIM clients use the digital certificates to encrypt each and every message (including the message headers) that is sent by the parties using AES. These packets do not bounce off of AOL's servers, but are sent directly from client to client.

The method isn't as closed an proprietary as you seem to think. The technique (and exact methods, indeed) are available online if you take the time to google. Also, Trillian Pro supports AIM encryption as well.

From your lack of knowledge, I surmise that you are either so paranoid that you probably wear tinfoil on your head, or are just plain ignorant.

Re:encryption

[Lehk228]

how about to keep random packet sniffers from grabbing your AIM conversations?

Re:encryption

[nurb432]

Doesnt it support SSL for jabber?

Re:encryption

[Ravatar]

If you're talking to someone that's too lazy to install the plugin, then it probably doesnt matter if someone grabs your AIM conversations.

Binary Packages

[saterdaies]

Is there a reason why the only binary packages are for Windows? I'd love to try the beta, but I don't want to spend all my time compiling from source.

Re:Binary Packages

[tomstdenis]

emerge gaim?

"all my time" ...

it takes 3 minutes to build at most [probably less]. How precious is your time that you can't background a build of gaim while doing work? ...newbs...

Tom

Re:Binary Packages

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to try the beta, but I don't want to spend all my time compiling from source.

But I thought that's what you alternative OS users live for, watching all the compile messages scrolling on the screen is kind of orgasmic for you geeks. Just clicking next,next,next,finish is so newbieish and boring.

Re:Binary Packages

[Jamori]

To be perfectly honest, it MIGHT take you 5 minutes to compile this on an 800 MHz machine. Just download the sources and give it a try -- I promise, it really isn't all that difficult and will be a good learning experience for you.

The README file should have plenty detailed instructions on the series of commands you need to type to get GAIM compiled and installed.

Good luck!

Re:Binary Packages

[ocelotbob]

Dude, there's this thing called multitasking. Download the client, check back in a bit. Jump to the console, run:

tar xfz gaim-x.x.x.tar.gz && cd gaim-x.x.x && ./configure && make && make install

Simple, doesn't take all of your time. Besides, they don't compile for anything else because it builds for a lot of different gtk/gnome versions. Easier to let the knowledgable people build it themselves, and let the uninitiated wait for their distro makers to include it - cuts down on people complaining because of ancient library versions, etc.

Re:Binary Packages

[nwbvt]

Each Linux distribution has its own form of package management, thus gaim can't exactly offer ready made packages for each distribution. Most distributions have plenty of people out there building these packages, so you should be fine.

Re:Binary Packages

[Jsutton1027w]

Some binary RPMs just showed up on the download page. They weren't there last night when the beta first became available. Looks like they have them for Redhat9 through Fedora4. Sadly, they don't have any Debs up there for Debian/Ubuntu...

Re:Binary Packages

[illuminix]

There goes my karma, but it's attitudes like this that slow the progress of alternative OS's. I think it's fine to cater to the people who don't want to know the ins and outs of compiling from source. Gentoo is pretty good like that.. but it's also one of the hardest to install. Don't get me wrong, all of my linux boxes are gentoo both at home and at work. I love it personally, but my wife (who also uses gentoo), parents, or many of my friends and coworkers wouldn't want to or simply couldn't set one up by themselves.

So aside from gentoo, people are pretty much left with two options. Install from source and a binary package. I don't think it's reasonable to mock someone for asking if there's a binary disto available. Granted, there's a lot of distros out there, and it may be harder than it sounds, but don't jump on the guy for asking.

Re:Binary Packages

[Minna Kirai]

Each Linux distribution has its own form of package management, thus gaim can't exactly offer ready made packages for each distribution.

It is easy to offer a package compatibile with any normal Linux desktop.

Re:Binary Packages

[heinousjay]

See, now this I like. You've managed to make a fairly contentless post that adequately explains a ton of your neuroses all at once.

The original recipe may have called for less condescension, but in the hands of a master such as yourself, that's merely a guideline.

Overall, the piquant pissiness of your post earns you a hefty 22 misshapen testicles out of a million.

Re:Binary Packages

[heinousjay]

Download the client, check back in a bit. Jump to the console, run:

tar xfz gaim-x.x.x.tar.gz && cd gaim-x.x.x && ./configure && make && make install

Simple

Yeah, that makes installing a binary on Windows look like an nigh impossible task.

Re:Binary Packages

[westlake]

Dude, there's this thing called multitasking. Download the client, check back in a bit. Jump to the console, run:
tar xfz gaim-x.x.x.tar.gz && cd gaim-x.x.x && ./configure && make && make install
Simple

and the Geek still wonders why everyone else stays with Windows and the Mac.

Re:Binary Packages

[ocelotbob]

Of course, you cut off right before I said if one wants simplicity, to just wait and let someone else package it for you. For the geek, like the original poster was, it is simple. For the uninitiated, it's best to just wait until their distro packages it, due to the reasons I gave. The original poster implied a knowledge of shell, so I provided a way for him to do the install in a fairly straightforward manner. If he gave the impression of being less shell-inclined, I'd have said it's best to just wait until the release version. The Gaim team is really good about providing binaries for popular Linux distros.

Re:Binary Packages

[CableModemSniper]

Binary packages are the responsibility of your distribution.

Re:Binary Packages

[tomstdenis]

Gentoo is not hard to install.

I've installed it dozens of times and now I don't even use the f'ing manual.

Basics

1. make sure hardware modules loaded
2. fdisk
3. format
4. mount
5. unpack stage1 and snapshot [or just make /usr/portage
6. emerge sync
7. make make.conf [or copy from other boxes]
8. bootstrap
9. emerge -U system
10. install lilo, syslog-ng, dcron, hotplug, coldplug
11. download and unpack kernel
12. Configure, make and install
13. set root passwd
14. reboot

15. setup hostname, network, etc
16. install world packages [e.g. gnome, mozilla, gaim, cvs, tetex, whatever]
17. Clean up distfiles
18. tarball your filesystem
19. burn to DVD and call it "my stage 4 install"
20. enjoy.

Wow, complicated.

Basically after you've installed gentoo once it's simple every other time. It also gets you to learn the tools [e.g. how to fdisk/format/mount partitions without using a walkthrough] and configure a linux box.

I recently gentoo'ed my new Dell laptop [inspiron 630m which rocks btw as it supports linux very well] and the "world build" took 6 hours which I did overnight. I built about 380 packages from a command line that specified about 15 packages, e.g.

emerge -UD gnome mozilla openoffice-bin mplayer xmms tetex ggv cvs rcs gaim ....

After tweaking the video [to get 1280x800 working which took me all of two hours] I tarballed the drive [730MB bz2 file] and sent it to my RAID-1 for archiving.

Now if my HD dies I can get it replaced [under the dell warranty] and just untar. Boom, linux running in all of 5 mins.

Tom

Re:Binary Packages

[drsquare]

Gentoo is not hard to install.
1. make sure hardware modules loaded 2. fdisk 3. format 4. mount 5. unpack stage1 and snapshot [or just make /usr/portage 6. emerge sync 7. make make.conf [or copy from other boxes] 8. bootstrap
9. emerge -U system 10. install lilo, syslog-ng, dcron, hotplug, coldplug 11. download and unpack kernel 12. Configure, make and install 13. set root passwd
14. reboot 15. setup hostname, network, etc 16. install world packages [e.g. gnome, mozilla, gaim, cvs, tetex, whatever] 17. Clean up distfiles 18. tarball your filesystem 19. burn to DVD and call it "my stage 4 install" 20. enjoy.
Wow, complicated.

I can't work out if that's sarcasm or not. Anywhere else, of course it would be, but on Slashdot there really are people who think like that.

After tweaking the video [to get 1280x800 working which took me all of two hours]

OK, this has to be a piss-take.

Re:Binary Packages

[jZnat]

After tweaking the video [to get 1280x800 working which took me all of two hours]

OK, this has to be a piss-take.

Indeed. I think it took me at least five weeks to get my fucking resolution up to 1280x800. Way to go, X!

Re:Binary Packages

[labratuk]

Because the people in charge of distributing the binary packages are.. the distributions.

They're the only ones who can be trusted to get it right and consistant with their system.

Re:Binary Packages

[westlake]

Of course, you cut off right before I said if one wants simplicity, to just wait and let someone else package it for you. For the geek, like the original poster was, it is simple

Which means that for everyone else if a package doesn't exist for your distro, it might as well not exist at all. Command-line syntax is hell for the casual typist.

Re:Binary Packages

[Cal Paterson]

Grow up.

Other people don't like to use computers the same way you do. You're worse than the idiot 11 year olds I deal with every day that INSIST that Playstation is better than Nintendo. I like Debian. Other people might like Ubuntu, or Fedora, or Suse, or Slackware.

There are hundreds of Unix distributions, yet they're always one fucking idiot claiming his way to be the one true way. Moron.

Re:Binary Packages

[dtfinch]

Some video cards/chipsets require a BIOS patch to get anything but the standard resolutions. Mine would require installing something called 855resolution to do this, if I wasn't satisfied with 1600x1200. I suspect the Windows drivers probably bypass the video BIOS to change the resolution.

Installing Linux isn't something most users do every day. Some are happy to take the long route, choose exactly which packages they want, watch everything built according to their favorite CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, and LDFLAGS with their favorite release of gcc, and then configure every package by hand. I'm sure it gets faster and easier each time they do it. I'm happy to just pop in a CD and answer a few questions.

Re:Binary Packages

[tomstdenis]

Why so defensive? I find something easy to use and I must be a zealot.

All I'm saying is dealing with dependencies is easy in Gentoo. Hence the comment about "building from source" being a problem can be mitigated with the right choice of distro. If ubuntu or Debian can do this as well, all the power to them.

From my experience Gentoo is a lot easier to configure [e.g. try installing The GIMP with tiff support in Debian...] than other distros and it isn't hard at all to work with. If that makes me a "zealot" or "idiot 11 yr old" then so be it.

It also makes me a happy Gentoo user who accomplishes productive work because my distro provides me with the tools and configurations I need to do the said work.

Tom

Re:Binary Packages

[tomstdenis]

Your comment about cflags shows your newbieness.

The power of Gentoo doesn't come from the cflags it comes from the USE flags.

e.g.

emerge gimp

no tiff support

USE=tiff emerge gimp

with tiff support.

See the difference?

apt-get install gimp

no tiff support

USE=tiff apt-get install gimp

no tiff support

PLEASE_USE=tiff apt-get install gimp

no tiff support ... ... ...

See the difference?

Tom

Re:Binary Packages

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that all?

When I last installed windows, it was

1. put disc in drive
2. reboot
3. select a timezone
4. create a user
5. there was no step 5

Re:Binary Packages

[Craig Davison]

That's assuming you have all the prerequisite libraries/header files.

Re:Binary Packages

[tomstdenis]

I googled, found another gentoo user with the same chipset [possibly the one good thing from Intdell] and set a modeline in X. Admitedly without the other user I wouldn't have figured it out on my own but that goes to show.

With the 915GM chipset you have to use the vesa driver for now with a specific modeline and then use the 915resolution to remap mode "45" to 1280x800 [if you're in 16bpp mode].

Tom

Re:Binary Packages

[thephotoman]

Well, ask and ye shall recieve. I'm setting up a delivery site where you can grab an Ubuntu Breezy .deb right now. And here it is.

Re:Binary Packages

[ocelotbob]

Yes, I was assuming he had the prequisite libraries. From how he described the problem, he seemed knowledgable enough, but waiting around for everything to install was a hassle for him. If he didn't, I'd have suggested waiting until the final release, or getting a geek buddy to help him out. It's no different from someone working on a car. If someone knows their way around the hood, I'd give them pointers on how to change the carb or belts, but for a neophyte friend, I'd either offer to head over there to help them out, or suggest getting someone to help them out. Sometimes, you give the blatantly simple instructions, sometimes, you give the one-liner that Just Does Everything with no explaination. It all depends on the situation.

Re:Binary Packages

[Anonymous Coward]

fine, then just wait till its listed in your "Install New Software" window that your distro comes with.

That is where it should be handled.

Re:Binary Packages

[Crayon Kid]

Oh really? How will that package manage to guess all the exact libraries I have installed on my system, with the exact versions and CPU type and so on?

Autopackage is just a tarball with a graphical unpacker, like those auto-unpacking RAR and ZIP packages for Windows.

Re:Binary Packages

[Crayon Kid]

Wow, complicated.

Yeah, it's beyond me how people could possibly consider a 20-steps install procedure complicated. Especially when compared to those sissy graphical installers where you can only click your mouse on the stupid options and buttons.

I'm off to wire-start my car now.

Re:Binary Packages

[Anonymous Coward]

Which means that for everyone else if a package doesn't exist for your distro, it might as well not exist at all.

No, it means that if you don't have the patience to pick up the minimal skills needed to compile up packages, it might as well etc.

But keep whining about it, I'm sure that'll get you what you want eventually.

Re:Binary Packages

[tomstdenis]

I can fix my linux box when the "sissy graphical interface" doesn't start. Can you?

If the price for knowing how to maintain my Linux box is I have to do a [99% automated] install process ... oh boo fucking hoo.

It may take 6-8 hours to get a box up from scratch [first time per configuration] but I'm only actually "working at it" for 20-30 mins tops [even less than that once you know what you are doing].

[that said and once you make your stage4 the install procedure really becomes, fdisk/format, untar, chown, lilo, reboot]

Tom

idle budies greyed out

[Anonymous Coward]

idle buddies are always greyed out now, no preference to remove this.
annoying

Re:idle budies greyed out

[mattsday]

10 cents says that there'll be a plugin in the next few weeks that brings back all the old options.

Re:idle budies greyed out

[Lehk228]

i am waiting to install untill there is a plugin to use the old style uncolored SN's in chats

What's new!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the changelog.

Posted anony to avoid karma whoring.

Re:What's new!

[BerkeleyDude]

Well done! The submitter should've included this link in the summary... Oh wait.

Re:What's new!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see any entry related to this beta release. So what was the use of your post?

For WIndows users

[The Hobo]

A couple things, if you can't find where to get the windows version (the windows port page hasn't been updated yet) it's here (with GTK)or here (without GTK)

Second, if you want bigger text for everything since the default is fairly small, make sure you install No Theme (or anything BUT the WIMP theme) and then goto your C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\etc\gtk-2.0 folder and edit the gtkrc file with notepad or something and change the one line from sans 8 to say, sans 10

There's a few more things I like to do to mine but it's all personal, I thought I'd throw out those two things though.

Re:For WIndows users

[Pavan_Gupta]

I know this is probably not the spot to ask for things from Win-GAIM, I'm sure a person or two could possibily comment on what I'm asking for.

(1) GAIM should not have such a large memory footprint. I'm not sure if this has been fixed in 2.0 beta, but it's a huge gripe I have. Given enough time and use, GAIM will just become this behemoth application that slows everything to a crawl.

(2) I know the Aways Message code has been rewritten, and hopefully it has taken into account the fact that not all away message lengths and types are standard -- so setting one away message for all acounts is not really feasible. For example, I could place a huge away message for my AIM accounts, but my Yahoo account will be awkwardly cut off. It's just kinda lame.

(3) I wish the logging feature in GAIM could somehow recollect logs from the ancient versions of GAIM (sub 0.70, I believe). I have logs that extend wayyy back in time, and I'd love to be able to reclaim them in GAIM today. I know there are some elements that were not included in those logs to break them into the exact format that is being used now, but I'm sure they are still parseable and reclaimable.

(4) I honestly believe that GAIM looks like garbage. I know the UI stuff is what OSS has been all about sucking at, and this is no departure from what seems like the norm, but c'mon. I am seriously waiting for the moment when GAIM can look like DeadAIM or Trillian, or anything in that general region of interest. Frankly, I think GAIM is a super powerful program, that I have loved for years, but damnit, make it look nice.

(5) The file sending and receiving feature for GAIM is garbage. I rarely can receive and send files without something catastrophic happening to my client. That is terrible, and almost a reason why I am slowly making plans to move away from it. Yes, I am sad about this too. Well, hopefully you are sad.

(6) And I really want to be able to control my buddy list a lot better. I remeber testing a really unstable CVS copy of GAIM, and I did notice that there was a way to list buddies based on log size, which is excellent, but still. I want other ways to do it too. And I'm not sure if there are other ways (you could enlighten me), but I think that would be an amazing tool.

(7) And then, generally speaking, I want GAIM to have more features. I really want the clients that I have on GAIM to have much better access to the normal client's array of stuff .. (this is openended, and I'm a bastard for suggesting something like this because it's huge and not really broken down, but damnit, I want more stuff -- and I'll write for GAIM, just give me a piece to write, and I'll get to it .. seriously, I should do that .. I will.)

And that's that. I have ranted .. hopefully somewhat positively. =)

-Pavan

Re:For WIndows users

[javabsp]

1) How large is large?
2) You can still set different status for each account
3) It should work already, I still have logs from years ago
4) It looks nice for me
5) Works for me generally. Couple days ago an ICQ buddy wanted to send me a file and I told her to send it to me via email. She insisted to try and it worked.
6) List buddies based on log size was implemented a long time ago.

Re:For WIndows users

[arodland]

No, not very positive. Mostly it just displays your ignorance.

1) This has nothing to do with gaim. GTK+ leaks memory like a sieve and somehow nobody's ever fixed that.

2) Why not find out instead of speculating? In any case, it does that.

3) Ever hear of a text editor or web browser?

4) This also has pretty much nothing to do with gaim. GTK+ allows you to style not only your whole system, but also any app however you want, without the "permission" of the app. If you haven't, that's your fault. But on that topic, Trillian is an ugly piece of shit.

5) It's been completely rewritten. Pay attention.

6) There's a manual option. You can put it in any order you want. Or you can write a script to put it in any order you want.

7) Gaim has more features than most anything. It's just that it's useful features instead of the kind of shit you get with, say, the ICQ or Yahoo clients. In any case, why do you need someone to "give you a piece"? You apparently know what you want to see, so go and write it!

Re:For WIndows users

[Omestes]

I honestly believe that GAIM looks like garbage. I know the UI stuff is what OSS has been all about sucking at, and this is no departure from what seems like the norm, but c'mon. I am seriously waiting for the moment when GAIM can look like DeadAIM or Trillian, or anything in that general region of interest. Frankly, I think GAIM is a super powerful program, that I have loved for years, but damnit, make it look nice.

Odd, over here in OS X land we have a very nice looking multiclient, AduiumX, which happens to be open source as well. I think is goes some what to say that OSS doesn't HAVE to be ugly. It might have something to do with OSS development on OS X though, where it already is an aesthetic platform, and people expect nice looking software, and like developing handsome apps to fit the general feel of the OS.

On Linux, sadly, people see interface design as optional, since the whole platform isn't very pretty (talking of window managers, not CLI, CLI is teh beautiful). Why make a nice looking app for KDE, KDE already looks like a spoonful of crap?

This can be said for Windows too, though at least there, there is a standard to the GUI, albeit a weak and kludgy one.

Re:For WIndows users

[AnyoneEB]

AduiumX is just Gaim with an Aqua frontend. Theoretically, nothing is stopping a win32 frontend project for Gaim except that GTK+ for win32 works fine.

Re:For WIndows users

[Breakfast Pants]

Small tip for linux and windows users alike:

"my-narrow-tree"
{
    GtkTreeView::expander_size = 0
}

# And apply the style to the buddy list:
widget "*gaim_gtkblist_treeview" style "my-narrow-tree"

Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[duerra]

This really bugs me, and is the reason I will not be upgrading to Gaim 2.0

* Removed "Gaim usage" and "Idle time reporting" preferences; behavior now always uses mouse/keyboard when available

I do not have Gaim report my idle time, largely for work reasons. If I am busy at work or whatever, I don't want the "obligation" of having to reply to a person that notices that I am no longer idle. This is a very common thing, and I prefer that that remains private. As far as anybody else should be concerned, I am away. It doesn't mean I am avoiding the person, but sometimes you have other things that need to get done, and I don't want to have to explain that to people that I don't want upset at me.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha. Linus Torvalds were right. Gnome people are all about removing features.

Switch to Kopete.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[porkThreeWays]

Use the idle maker plugin. Sure, it's a little more hassle, but it's better than nothing.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[Malto]

This is one thing I really dislike about this release. I always used that feature simply so that people didn't know if I was there. If you're trying to avoid someone or are too busy you can simply answer the message later when you've got time instead of having them know you're in front of the computer.

I think I might revert back to 1.5...

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the exact same thing when I saw all of the options that were removed from Gaim 2.0.

This release, though it has a lot of improved things, is a step backwards.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[zdzichu]

That's what "Do Not Disturb" status is for.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[psavo]

You can't set a 'DND' for some single stupid asshole that thinks that all your time belongs to her.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[Robo210]

Funny, I just installed the Windows port, and the option to report idle time is still there, but the option of which type of idle time should be reported (not using the computer, or not using gaim) has been removed. It is this the change log is referring to.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[Outland Traveller]

*grumbles* I use this option all the time. It's my business whether people people see how idle I am or not. I hope someone creates a fork with the functionality re-enabled / plugins pre-applied. If no one does so I may do it myself.

Lots of people who use IM as part of their job do not want their idle time broadcast. This seems so bloody obvious I'm shaking my head why it would be removed in the first place.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[Nadir]

Gaim has nothing to do with Gnome

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[junk]

It's not that you can't hide your idle time, it's that it doesn't allow you to choose what it uses to report idle time. Instead of giving you the report-idle-time-base-on options, it just uses your keyboard/mouse to determine how idle this you are. It used to also allow the option of reporting idle time based on gaim usage only (you could work on your computer all you want and it would consider you idle until you typed into a gaim chat window). If you don't want people to know whether your idle or ignoring them (don't debate it, you know you all use it to ignore people) then don't report your idle time at all. Or use idle maker like that one guy suggested...

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[oKtosiTe]

Yes it is.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[mattwarden]

Amen. Gaim has a habit of removing the features I like most, and then not offering alternative instructions to still have that setting (surely it still can be managed via a config file somewhere, but I have no idea how). In the changelog, these feature removals are listed as: "Simplified configuration-x interface"

I will try out Gaim2 for myself, but if there truly is no way to set idle reporting to gaim usage, I will revert to 1.x

Making me dig and dig trying to figure out how to use Gaim the way I used to be able to use it is not simplifying the interface.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[kabloom]

I really don't understand what the point of "Idle time reports Gaim usage" is. Could someone enlighten me?

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[EnronHaliburton2004]

There are many times when I am working, but not at my keyboard mouse. Perhaps I am in the server room. Perhaps I am at my desk reading or writing notes (on paper!!!).

As fucked as it seems, many people seem to think that if my status is "Idle" I am not working. That's why I turn it off.

I use an Away message, but Gaim doesn't always send your Away message when people write to you on the AIM protocol. So they write, get no response, and think you're goofing off.

When I move to Gaim 2, I'll probably check out one of the plugins.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[mattwarden]

Idle reporting is based on the last time you sent an IM.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[Anonymous Coward]

Gaim has nothing to do with Gnome

Then, by starting their application name with a G, they have infringed on Gnome's registered trade dress!

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[ottothecow]

Then it shouldnt be so hard for them to put it back.

I dont see why they feel the need to remove features like this. Just set the default behavior how they think it should be and LEAVE the feature there. Its like when they got rid of away messages that went away when you started talking to someone. There was always an option for it and it was the standard behavior or many other clients...then one day the option dissapeared...wtf

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[fossa]

The other reply said what it is. The point, for me, is that I can be using my computer yet appear idle. This way my friends won't learn that I'm a total loser and spend *way* too much time on the computer. Or if I want to remain signed on but not chat with anyone, it's great to be able to appear idle but continue to use the computer. I even want it to go further and allow you to chat while remaining idle (I'm not sure if IdleMaker allows this or not... I guess if you set "no idle reporting" and use IdleMaker; can't remember) so you can chat with a privledged few while still appearing idle.

I'm very disappointed at the removal of this feature. I wonder if the IdleMaker plugin can be extended to support this option.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[ottothecow]

It reports idle time based on use of IM features thus if you are watching a DVD (well I suppose you wouldnt use the keyboard/mouse then either unless you pause a lot) or writing a paper and you havnt touched Gaim in 45 minutes, it was able to figure out that you are idle in your IM behavior.

I guess now it just assumes that if you are using the keyboard or mouse you MUST be interested in IMing.

And yes, I put up an away message when I am doing these things but I rarely take down my away message since I am often in and out of my room and I just forget (ever since they REMOVED the option to return from away when you send an IM...)

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[heinousjay]

You can't just ignore somebody? Alternatively, why remain logged in at all?

Your problem is so far outside the bounds of the norm, I'm kinda glad it's not handled in the app proper. It doesn't belong there.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[duerra]

There are a number of reasons why, including that maybe you're talking over IM with a client or coworker. There are a number of reasons why, but even more importantly, that is a privacy issue that I nor anybody else should have to justify our preference of that feature's existence.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[javabsp]

A developer has said that this will likely come back because a lot of people complained and their arguments are reasonable.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[mattwarden]

Yeah, or AT LEAST have a friggin advanced settings mode. Or would that be too Windows-y...

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[mattwarden]

Yeah, if you use IdleMak'r you can IM while still be idle. But then the jig is up when people get your IM and you're still idle.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[CowsAnonymous]

I thought the same thing when reading the readme, then I saw this screenshot: http://process-of-elimination.net/wiki/Image:Gaim_ Preferences_Away.png

Don't think there's much to worry about.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[Neoncow]

As a student, idle usually means that the person is working and is too busy to be on the computer. Otherwise, they're probably chatting with people or webbrowsing. ;)

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[ottothecow]

Do it the VLC way

The advanced settings button resides on the bottom of the preferences window and can be hit when editing any set of options. It gives you access to all of those nifty options that someone might want to change so you should probobly keep them somewhere (in keeping with the fact that one of the reasons linux and other F/OSS software is better since it lets you do exactly what you want).

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[arodland]

This seems so bloody obvious I'm shaking my head why it would be removed in the first place.

Easy. It hasn't been. Don't trust changelog authors to actually explain things in a manner that makes sense. You can still choose whether or not to report your idle status; you're just not required to tell gaim how to compute idle-time anymore. It will use keyboard/mouse activity if it's able to get that information from the system, and gaim activity otherwise.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[Anonymous Coward]

You can in Jabber :)

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[nwbvt]

Wouldn't it be easier to just set an away message saying you are working and may not be able to get back to someone right away? Then set it so that messages that you recieve while you are away are minimized (I don't remember specifically what the setting was called) so it won't get in your way and you will have an excuse as to why you didn't see the message.

The problem with just making it look like you are away when you are really not is that at some point your boss or someone will figure out that is what you are doing, and from that point on they will assume you are available and just hiding that fact, even when you really are not (I've seen that happen to people myself).

All this being said, it should be easy to create a plugin that enable those preferences. Since most people would have no use for them, it seems they would work better as plugins anyways.

In Case of Slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Gaim: The Pimpin' Penguin IM Client that's good for the soul!

version 2.0.0:
Status System:
* The code dealing with buddy and account status, away messages,
away states, online/offline, etc has been completely rewritten.
Huge thanks to Christian Hammond, Dave West, Daniel Atallah and
Sadrul Habib Chowdhury.
* Your status can now be set from inside the buddy list using the
selector at the bottom of the window.
* To see messages when a buddy signs on or off, goes away, or
becomes idle, load the "Buddy State Notification" plugin

Buddy List:
* Buddy icons are now shown in tooltips (Felipe Contreras)
* Tooltips now contain additional information about a "Person" that
contains multiple online buddies
* Added a "Last Seen" field to buddy tooltips (Richard Laager)
* Contacts will auto-expand when buddies are dragged around
* If Gaim is exited with the buddy list hidden in the docklet, it
will remain hidden when Gaim is started again (Scott Shedden)
* Improved buddy list searching with CTRL+F

Conversations and Chats:
* Messages from buddies in the same "Person" will automatically
use the same conversation window.
* The "Send As" menu has been replaced with a more appropriate
"Send To" menu based on "Persons" on your buddy list
* Message formatting persists between messages (Igor Belyi)
* Full message background colors are now supported
* Smooth scrolling when receiving a new message
* Screenname colors in chats now chosen intelligently from GNOME
color palette
* Conversation buffer scrollback limited to avoid large memory
usage in active conversations
* Control-Shift-Tab will reverse cycle through the conversation tabs
(James Vega)
* Many problems related to having an IM conversation and a chat open
with the same name are fixed (Andrew Hart)
* Warning dialog when closing a window with unread IM messages
* In chats right-click on names in the conversation window to
IM/Send File/Get info/ignore the user
* Added tab management options to the tab right-click menu (Sadrul Habib
Chowdhury)
* Brand new message queueing system (Casey Harkins)

Sounds:
* Beautiful new default sounds (Brad Turcotte)
* Use libao for playing sounds via NAS instead of accessing NAS directly

Log Viewer:
* Log viewer aggregates logs from the same Contact (Richard Laager)
* When opening the log viewer, show the most recent log by default
(Peter M

No sweat...

[jZnat]

chmod 0600 ~/.gaim/accounts.xml

Now I hope that you trust root enough not to want to h4x0r your IM accounts...

You can always keep a gpg-encrypted backup of that file as well. OR, you could `tar -cj ~/.gaim | gpg -eo gaim.tar.bz2.gpg` or similar...

Re:No sweat...

[javabsp]

If you don't trust root, there's nothing that you can do. You don't know for sure the kernel doesn't do anything funny, do you?

Re:No sweat...

[jZnat]

I trust that my filesystem will deny any asshat that tries to access a file without proper permissions. Provided you don't get rootkitted, chmodding your accounts.xml file is probably the best security you're going to get.

i'll never use gaim

[ltwally]

I'll never use gaim, personally. Or would I recommend anyone else. Why?

Simple. A little over a year ago, I contacted one of gaim's core developers about gaim's difficulties with file transfers when any of the party is NAT'd. He didn't know or care about the file transfer stuff, so he put me in contact w/ another core developer. The second guy was even worse; he was in charge of file transfers and such, but outright told me that he didn't care if things didn't work in NAT'd environments and that things would probably never change. Though I cannot remember the conversation, verbatim, I do remember this: not only was he pretty damn rude (whereas I had been more than polite), but he didn't care that the code he was in charge of didn't work well.

I gave it some thought, and decided that if the developers of gaim have attitudes like this, it is not a project that I want any part of. <shrugs> What's more: IM has become an integral part of staying in touch with people. It's right up there with email. If the developers of the defacto standard IM client for *nix don't care if it has issues and don't care to fix those issues, how in the hell do people honestly expect anyone to switch from windows to a FOSS *nix (ie. linux, freebsd, etc). Having bugs is one thing, but not even caring about those bugs? Psssh.

(And, yes, I know the changelog says that they've fixed some of the NAT issues... but for me, I've already decided that the apathy about the quality of their product is cause enough to permanently stay away from gaim.)

Re:i'll never use gaim

[duerra]

That attitude, from what I have picked up, is pretty standard with the gaim developers, and it has frustrated me as well (note: I have not dealt with any of them personally, however).

There is a big thread on the SF projects page regarding all of the options that have been removed in Gaim 2.0, and a *lot* of people are frustrated over it, but the general response from the developers, IMO, has been very rude, and in a tone that projects that they don't really care if other people agree with their decisions or not. I've read other posts from users that have complained about the lack of "care" and bad attitude reponse that the gaim development team seems to have for people offering suggestions, seeking support, or who otherwise disagree with the decisions that have been made.

I, too, am considering dropping Gaim based on the attitude that I have witnessed.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Lisandro]

I once presented a weird problem i had with GAIM to one of its developers, via Jabber (no need to mention him here). GAIM would work just peachy with one version of X.Org, but would die with another!
    Since i'm a Gentoo user, he proceeded to, basically, tell me to piss off and seek for help among the Gentoo package mantainers. I was pissed, but after a while he (we) cooled down and actually managed to have a very nice conversation. And yes, i managed to solve the problem :)

    Thing is, they have a point; they get flooded by requests/questions/bogus bugreports by people that bitch to the developers for any minor problem, problems that most of the time are well covered in the FAQs. On the other hand, yes, the GAIM developers seem to be particularly jumpy (and even borderline assholes, sorry). Perhaps big proyects like GAIM could find some sort of middle-ground solution, like a group of people willing to help people with problems, a-la-helpdesk, which could in turn deffer questions to the actual developers if they feel they're merited.
    I don't know if such thing would be possible (or another solution, for that matter), but you have to keep in mind the GAIM developers receive the complaints directly. It can wear one off in no time.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

I should say that I am not a huge fan of gaim. In my frank opinion I think it's a pretty shitty project; I say that as a programmer. But...

NAT traversal is NOT an easy problem to solve. And these are closed protocols we're talking about, too. I am extremely bad at metaphors, but let's say you belong to a rock climbing club, and like to climb rocks in your spare time. Imagine then that someone insisted, demanded that you shove a giant boulder up a mountain, then complained on slashdot when they didn't get their way.

The fact is, gaim doesn't exist to solve your NAT issues.

So many people who complain about "Linux not being ready for the desktop" and open source projects just don't understand... These projects can't be everything to everyone, and they're not all necessarily that altruistic either.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

guess what -- no one cares

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the biggest problem with gaim is that they have a reputation they don't deserve. If you look at their code it's not very exceptional. It's one of those projects that works by coincidence, not by design. But, it's still the most popular client for X11, mostly because they've solved a lot of ugly programming issues as far as protocol compatibility (not fun) and GUI, and so people are pretty comfortable with it, and the barrier for a new client is awfully steep.

As I've said, they don't deserve the recognition they have, and so it wouldn't surprise me if they're all full of themselves.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[ltwally]

As I've been mod'd "flamebait" and have a few responses to my parent noting how hard NAT traversal is and such, I'm going to post a generic response to y'all:

Firstly: let me reiterate: I was beyond polite to both developers. I didn't bitch and moan, and I didn't flood them with unrequested details. I simply said that I had noted that NAT'd environments seemed to be causing gaim clients problems. Their responses were totally uncalled for. If they knew of the problems, and didn't want to discuss it.. there are more polite ways than saying, "Yeah, we know. And I'll probably never fix it, since I don't use NAT. Only loosers use NAT. Don't like it? Fine. Find another client." (yes, this is a paraphrase, but more accurate than you would like to think. It's both immature and uncalled for.)

Secondly: I never claimed that NAT traversal was easy. I have total sympathy for anyone coding to make it work... but that does not excuse the gaim developers' attitudes. There is little excuse for being a dick to a user. And not even caring if your code causes everyone under NAT to have headaches? Sorry.. but with attitudes like that.. their product will rarely improve, and they will drive away a large number of people that might have migrated to their product.

If you wish to use an IM client developed by people like that... fine. Just remember that next time you're bashing the poor quality of code and corporate apathy of companies like Microsoft or Real-Networks. (mind you, I am not a fan of either.)

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

So fix it yourself. It's called open source for a reason.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[teslar]

I, too, am considering dropping Gaim based on the attitude that I have witnessed.

In favour of what though? I do not like Gaim, but I'm still using it because I don't know of a better multi-protocol client on linux.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

He was right though. That *should* have gone to the Gentoo maintainers, and then upstream from there. Almost no bugs you encounter should go directly to the program authors.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't use gaim either.

But... Let's consider this. If you went to Microsoft and asked them to implement a feature, do you really think they'd listen? Do you think they'd give you the relevant developer's email address?

(Rhetorical questions.)

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? After all, you're paying them for a product.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[thinkliberty]

How much money have you given the gaim project and why should they care if you have a problem?

I am guessing that you have given them zero dollars... Which means that you are already getting more than you payed for.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone is a coder. :)

Re:i'll never use gaim

[nutshell42]

Kopete?

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

They're giving you complete freedom to enjoy their work; perhaps you should bitch less about their attitude and appreciate that a little more.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[texroot]

I don't quite get the almost universal hostility to what you've said, either. Maybe all the Gaim developers post on Slashdot.

I get that it's free software and most haven't paid anything for it. But gratuitous obnoxiousness on the part of the developers doesn't seem to bode well for this project long-term. If they don't care about their users then eventually most people will move to a project where the developers do care.

I don't think I'll hold my breath now waiting for webcam and voice chat support.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I always install a console-based version of whatever gui network app I need to use. Lynx/firefox. pine/Tbird. Etc. And CenterICQ is a pretty decent console analog to Gaim. Only problem I have with it is that screen messes it up bad. So just open up another putty/xterm.

But for GUI stuff, gaim is hard to beat.

If you don't like it, you don't like it. But if you're one of the guys bitching about the developer's attitude, step back and think about it for a moment. They're giving you free software, and they're trying to keep up with not one, but several closed protocols. It is open source, if you feel so strongly that they can't be trusted to do a decent job, fork the goddamned thing. Your reaction makes sense if you're paying for it, but you aren't. And they won't care if you stop using it... doesn't cost them any money.

This attitude befuddles me... if only you people would do the same with crappy commercial software, stop using it because the developers are assholes, Microsoft wouldn't be the force that it is today. Somehow though, it only ever gets applied to OSS...

Re:i'll never use gaim

[mattwarden]

How typical of slashdot that you get modded as flamebait and troll. Ridiculous.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they can pay some nice coder like me to add the feature.

Or they can shut the hell up.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[DeafByBeheading]

Are you?

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Mars Ultor]

How much money have you given the gaim project and why should they care if you have a problem?

Hear that? That's the sound of you demonstrating the point. How much money did he give? Who cares? If you're developing non-commercial F/OSS, you're doing it because you want to, not because it helps in making the payments on the Porsche.

Why should they care? Well, a couple of things here, basic pride in one's work maybe? Because they're the people responsible for the program, so when someone tries to give them honest and constructive feedback, they might want to listen, or at least give a polite, "we'll keep it in mind" response. If developer responsible for NAT issues in Gaim does't care about NAT issues in Gaim, that's fucked.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but how about something for a desktop environment that *isn't* a big ball of shit? I can't even start Kopete from GNOME without it launching 50 k* processes and throwing out tons of errors on the "konsole".

Re:i'll never use gaim

[darkmeridian]

Well, in a perfect world GAIM developers would be really nice and code everything to your whims. But you have to realize that you were probably the tenth guy in that hour to send him a nice e-mail about how NAT file-transfers do not work. He knows that already and each other person that tells him is doing nothing unless they picked up a keyboard and started hacking. So he's disgruntled, sure. Look how they treat the Gentoo folk who compile with all sorts of weird flags and then bug Gaim devs when it doesn't work. But Gaim is a strong piece of OSS and it is of good quality. It's plugin API is stable and it is very well-developed, I would say, in terms of software architecture. It's childish to let feelings get in the way.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Lehk228]

I can transfer files even though i am behind a NAT firewall. it is not the job of applicaiton designers to hack around NAT's just RTFM and set up your firewall to foreward to your machine.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

I write code for a high-profile project and I must say that it's pretty hard not to become an asshole when you're in a project like that.

You're constantly bombarded with questions by people who think they deserve your time without doing the least bit of research first and that just because you wrote some code (for fun!; and for free!) that you're obligated to support it. If people want professional support they can bloddy well pay for it.

Fact of the matter is, you get jumpy at people in your discussion forums because their in-the-faq-would-have-been-answered-by-30-seconds- of-googling questions drown real *productive* discussions that would serve to enhance the software rather than to act as a brain drain on the project.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[evilviper]

The second guy was even worse; he was in charge of file transfers and such, but outright told me that he didn't care if things didn't work in NAT'd environments and that things would probably never change.

How polite was Bill Gates the last time you contacted him about a bug in MSN Messenger?

If the developers of the defacto standard IM client for *nix don't care if it has issues and don't care to fix those issues, how in the hell do people honestly expect anyone to switch from windows to a FOSS *nix (ie. linux, freebsd, etc).

I don't think the GAIM developers are trying to convince anyone to switch to Linux/FreeBSD. They certainly aren't your personal servants, and free software, although often run by rude people, is (in ALL my experience) FAR, FAR, FAR more responsive to user requests than big commercial software companies. If you'd contacted Microsoft/AOL with a similar problem (or even an actual, serious bug) you'd have recieved a nice, polite form letter in response, telling you to try X, Y, Z unrelated nonsense, and then telling you that the problem you're having doesn't actually exist, and that your suggestion has been passed on to the developers. Maybe 10 versions later, the bug will be half-fixed as they introduce some other serious bugs.

Having bugs is one thing, but not even caring about those bugs? Psssh.

It's not a bug. They don't care that you are missing a minor feature you would like to have. Sounds pretty fair to me.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Jozer99]

Then people would bitch that they couldn't talk to the developers of open source code.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, I wonder why Open Source people have a bad name?

Re:i'll never use gaim

[animaal]

Commercial software is written to make money for shareholders. In order to earn this money, the development organization has two primary tasks;

1) to develop the best software possible, in order to attract new customers

2) to keep existing customers happy, in order to avoid losing existing customers, and having those lost customers scaring away potential customers.

On the other hand, free software is written for entirely different reasons. In my experience, the primary motivator is the developers' interest in the technology, possibly followed by an interest in being well-known for accomplishments. The important thing to note is that, unlike with commercial software, the satisfaction of the programmer is the main focus, rather than the satisfaction of shareholders, and thus customers.

There is nothing wrong with this, such programmer-motivated development can produce results that would be difficult to achieve in a commercial organization that is always being pressed for profit. But if you are choosing software to use, and want your needs to be important to the developer, you may be better served by choosing a developer whose livlihood depends on your satisfaction - a commercial software provider.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[tez_h]

Hear that? That's the sound of you demonstrating the point. How much money did he give? Who cares? If you're developing non-commercial F/OSS, you're doing it because you want to, not because it helps in making the payments on the Porsche.

Indeed. This doesn't imply though that he wants to do it for others.

Why should they care? Well, a couple of things here, basic pride in one's work maybe? Because they're the people responsible for the program, so when someone tries to give them honest and constructive feedback, they might want to listen, or at least give a polite, "we'll keep it in mind" response. If developer responsible for NAT issues in Gaim does't care about NAT issues in Gaim, that's fucked.

Maybe he does have pride in his work. Maybe the NAT module in GAIM is the prettiest, most readable, most efficient, best goddamned piece of code ever to have existed. But asking for NAT-traversing file-transfers is a feature request for a non-core function.

You also seem to deliberately feel that those who program OSS must defer all attention and effort to the user. The developer is his own most important user, and so in every important, useful way, he is listening to his most valued customer. The fact that the code is open means that he can be as rude as he likes to you, and you can be as rude as you like to him. You can then take the source and add all the bells and whistles you want.

So far, all you've demonstrated is that some people lack manners. There are worse. Maybe he won't keep your constructive criticism in mind. Maybe he doesn't like deluding people into thinking he'll set aside time for requests that they could, in principle, fulfill themselves. Maybe that's his loss. Maybe his golden rule is that it only matters when he personally runs up against it. That seems almost the defining aspect of successful opensource software, actually. When enough people run up against, set aside time for, and implement NAT file transfers, then GAIM will have the best NAT-traversal file-transfer module out there. Has any project really bent to the will of a critical mass of non-developer users? Your question, "Why should they care?" sounds rhetorical, yet you haven't really answered it.

-Tez

Re:i'll never use gaim

[ltwally]

"How polite was Bill Gates the last time you contacted him about a bug in MSN Messenger?"

#1 Bill Gates is not a developer (ie. programmer) of MSN Messenger. The people I contacted were.
#2 Bill Gates does not have his IM screenname publically listed so that users can contact him. The people I contacted had their screennames sitting on the gaim website just so people like me could contact them with gaim-related issues. The first developer even put me in contact with the second one.

"... They certainly aren't your personal servants, and free software, although often run by rude people, is (in ALL my experience) FAR, FAR, FAR more responsive to user requests than big commercial software companies. ..."

#1 I never said they were my personal servants. But they are the people that their own website lists as contacts for technical help and bug reports, as stated above. If they did not wish to be IM'd by end users seeking technical assistance, then they shouldn't have their screennames listed on their website as official contacts for just such a purpose!!
#2 Saying that FOSS developers are more responsive than closed source companies in no way means that they are good. Case in hand. The two developers that I spoke with are official representatives of the gaim project, and they were complete dicks. You cannot excuse that with a mere, "well, that's better than Microsoft would give you.."

"It's not a bug. They don't care that you are missing a minor feature you would like to have. Sounds pretty fair to me."

NAT traversal was supposed to work long, long ago. It didn't. It is a bug. It's a well-known bug. It's been reported as a bug for some time, now.

You're trolling, buddy. You need to get over your ideological beliefs about FOSS and realise that the people in charge of gaim had no excuse for their attitudes towards me and their attitudes concerning the quality of their code.

END OF STORY.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[evilviper]

#1 I never said they were my personal servants.

They didn't fix the problem you wanted to have fixed right away. That is saying they are supposed to act like your servants.

The two developers that I spoke with are official representatives of the gaim project, and they were complete dicks. You cannot excuse that with a mere, "well, that's better than Microsoft would give you.."

How friendly they were is completely besides the point. The point was, I'd much, much rather have rude people that actually FIX problems and LISTEN to complaints, rather than polite people that accomplish nothing, and really ignore what you've got to say.

You need to get over your ideological beliefs about FOSS and realise that the people in charge of gaim had no excuse for their attitudes towards me and their attitudes concerning the quality of their code.

You're just upset that your ego got bruised. That's all there is to this bullshit complaining of yours.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I'll hold my breath now waiting for webcam and voice chat support.

With snide remarks like your's, based on hearsay and /. bitching, is it any wonder OSS developers often appear to not give a fuck about the features you relentless leeches seem to think are essential?

Re:i'll never use gaim

[ltwally]

"They didn't fix the problem you wanted to have fixed right away. That is saying they are supposed to act like your servants."

I never asked them to fix it right away. I merely brought it to their attention -- asking if they knew of a solution (I had assumed that I was doing something wrong, until that point) -- and was summarily treated like crap. So, you seem to think that the appropriate response from a coder/developer (whom has his IM publicly listed for the masses to contact) is to basically say, "kiss off. I know it's broken, and I don't care. Go find someone who does care." ??? You must be one of the most obtuse people I've ever met, to believe that this type of response was reither warranted or proper.

"How friendly they were is completely besides the point. The point was, I'd much, much rather have rude people that actually FIX problems and LISTEN to complaints, rather than polite people that accomplish nothing, and really ignore what you've got to say."

Yes... so, when the developer in charge of NAT traversal said that it was unlikely he would ever fix it, this was what you call good? Obviously you are not versed on this gaim issue. Let me help you: gaim was supposed to be able to traverse NAT'd environments years ago. This was not some small, obscure bug. It was well known, and affected a large number of (potential) users. Yet the person in charge of this code decided to let it continue until just recently. (For all I know, the developer was replaced, or someone outside the core developers finally submitted changes to fix it.) At any rate, I find it amazing that you would declare this acceptable. I have rarely found a closed source company that was willing to let such a large problem go so long unfixed. Not when so many people were driven away from the program because of it.

"You're just upset that your ego got bruised. That's all there is to this bullshit complaining of yours."

Nope. I'm merely pointing out that you are purposefully ignorant, to the point where you can only be a zealot. You need to get off your zealot-horse, and come back to a little place called, "Earth." Here on Earth, we realise that this type of behavior from official spokesmen towards users is unexceptable, no matter whether it is FOSS or closed-source. Their attitude drives away not only end-users, but potential coders for their projects.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[arantius]

What idiocy. How about you pay someone, then be critical about what it is you're getting. You contacted someone that makes a wonderful product available for free, and they weren't nice to you? Boo-hoo.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[thinkliberty]

You have the code... If you want a feature post a bounty, hire someone at guru.com, code it yourself.

Or you can cry boohoo the developer that coded the software that I paid nothing for does not want to work for free for me. For something I "think" should be in the software, but he doesn't. BooHoo they are asses.

He is coding what he wants to, not what some whiny ass freeloading user wants. He gave you his code for free and didn't charge you for it so he could pay for his Porsche.

He is proud of his code, you can tell this by the fact that he showing you the code. He is responsible for the program and it shows, because chatting works through NAT.

Go back to paying for closed source software, F/OSS doesn't need crybaby freeloaders like you.

Re:i'll never use gaim

[Dagmar d'Surreal]

So basically, your argument is that the software must be flawed because you feel that someone was rude to you when you were asking for a feature that is technically not possible?

Perhaps you should take your head out of your butt.

Sorry to burst your bubble...

[jZnat]

I hate to be the one who has to break it to you, but anyone who is using AIM encryption would also be using the official AIM client, thusly they are on a 'doze box, and thusly any encryption efforts on such are futile as they are probably loaded with spyware and/or viruses/trojans/worms/STDs/etc. Your typical techie using 'doze won't be using crap like the official AIM client anyhow, so any secure communications you want to have with people are not going to be via AIM...

Re:Sorry to burst your bubble...

[heinousjay]

You didn't put quite enough "air of superiority" into that nugget of wisdom. You did hit a nice mixture of condescension and Slashdot cliches, though. Overall, I give your post six misshapen testicles out of a million.

It's your own fault-

[soundoff]

If you set your nickname to "never ending", you're bound to get physicists hassling you.

buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

no-one cares

blocking spim?

[yog]

Yahoo spim can't be blocked with Gaim 1.5 and earlier; every couple of days I find a message on my screen "Hi I'm Honey Bunny, check out my pix! Not there? Oh too bad, maybe later!" and this kind of crap. I don't want or need unsolicited instant messages but there appears to be no way to block them generically with GAIM even though the feature exists on Yahoo's client. I have to block each of these bots retroactively. Grr. I have about two Yahoo buddies and maybe I should just tell them to move to MSN or AOL.

Re:blocking spim?

[wastaz]

Now, I am not sure if this works for Yahoo since I dont use that myself...but it works for MSN/ICQ/AIM in any case. If you go to Tools->Privacy you can set privacy for the separate accounts. I have mine set on "Allow only the users below" and then almost anyone on my buddy list. It is possible to set this to "Allow only users on my buddy list" and then you should be set, there's plenty of ways to configure it so you dont need to be disturbed by HoneyBunnies :)

Re:blocking spim?

[yog]

Yes, you're quite right, but it doesn't work for Yahoo. I've confirmed this on the sourceforge.net discussion board. It has something to do with Yahoo's protocols. I still don't understand it because GAIM has my list of buddies, and it has the ability to not pop up a message, so why can't it do so? I guess it's just a customized feature that they don't feel like implementing at this time. Perhaps it's doable through a plugin.

Just an FYI - Kopete supports this

[brunes69]

In case you can't wait.

http://kopete.kde.org

What the heck?

[Mike Savior]

Is it just me, or did they oversimplify everything? I know they're trying to go in a new direction with this version of Gaim but jeez, all the options became so sugar-coated that I no longer feel like I'm being treated like a newbie at the program, I'm feeling like grandma. Where are all of my options? Now I see what Linus was talking about, though Gaim isn't static to Gnome..

Re:What the heck?

[petabyte]

Amen.

Gaim has been moving that way for a while but this 2.0 thing is too basic. I understand the idea of removing tons and tons of options and keeping it simple for new people but this is the playschool edition of what this app could be. Couldn't we have and advanced option setting which gives us back all of those settings and tweaks we are accustomed to?

Re:What the heck?

[Mike Savior]

It seems to be moving in this direction for almost all GTK+ apps (except maybe the Gimp?) including Gnome. *Dons tinfoil armor* I love Gnome, don't get me wrong, but GTK+ and Gnome-offshoot apps are taking a dive towards "Gramma and grampa" users. I'd love to see in the future, these developers adding an option for more options, for those of us who know what we're doing.

That and an option to remove the status crap on this version of Gaim's buddy list. Who the hell thought that up? I remember when because of all these options they took away, I could make Gaim as thin or bloated as I wanted..

Re:What the heck?

[petabyte]

Yeah, gnome is also starting to chaffe me. The thing is, I really like the look and feel of GTK. And if gnome continues to go down the road to application stupidity (which really started with nautilus little force you to use spatial before it was really ready road), there's always XFCE which serves as a good alternative.

I figure the pendulum of poorly emulating apple's interface can only go so far and then maybe we'll reach a happy medium of easy to use apps that have features. Only time will tell.

Re:What the heck?

[Mike Savior]

There'll always be the option for trying another desktop environment in lieu of another or creating/altering the program to suit our tastes. But that doesn't change the fact that unless we really want to go out of our way to handle the latter, (or just not upgrading), the problems that face us in the "light" of "new features" that are really just hack-outs of things that aren't functional to mom and dad.

Hell, even Windows has an "Advanced" button or tab in most of its own settings, and you know how Windows is regarded here.

Re:What the heck?

[big daddy kane]

and worst of all is that many of those removed options can be edited through gtk configuration files, lengthening the gap between novice and advanced users. while before a novice could ignore the advanced options and an intermediate user could play around with them, now an intermediate user has to dig around a text file to change it, which advanced users are often more familier with, and the distance between an intermediate and advanced user can be large. maybe a solution similar to the one in vlc would be appropriate? where advanced options are included but hidden behind a toggle switch.

Where's Gaim-otr for this new beta?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to keep my conversations private and Gaim-otr is excellent for that.

gaim UI

[tuggy]

sorry to play a bit of a troll here but...

gaim UI sucks. it doesnt follow the gnome HIG and has lots of usability flaws. lets face reality, the only reason its so widely spread and being the "official" gnome IM, is because there is no other alternative!!

(i'm talking about the pre 2.0 version)

Re:gaim UI

[travail_jgd]

"it doesnt follow the gnome HIG"

For some of us, that's a feature, not a bug. :)

That said, hopefully there is some improvement. The "Tools -> Account Actions" submenu in particular is a pain to deal with.

Re:gaim UI

[OUWxGuesser]

Agreed... I like the old UI with JUST the buddy list. I couldn't find any options to turn off account/active status tabs. Talk about annoying.

Re:gaim UI

[tuggy]

if that is a feature for some, i bet they are also not using gnome... SO, there are other better clients available :)

Re:gaim UI

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

So you're saying there's a GNUstep IM client? Something with the scrollbar on the left, where it should be?

Re:gaim UI

[GhaleonStrife]

Same here. I had to vertically stretch it as far as possible, and even then, I couldn't see as much as I could with my 1.5 buddy list. =\ The stretched tabs are pretty annoying, too. Couldn't find a way to turn those off. I'll wait until it's a bit more usable.

Re:gaim UI

[tuggy]

no, i'm saying that you can use aMSN, Mercury, Kopete or other IM client... since you are probably not so worried about the whole desktop looking the same

Re:gaim UI

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Heh. Actually, I like my desktop to feel integrated. Just not willing to use ugly-assed KDE or Gnome to get that.

My windowmaker + kxdocker + skippy-xd is actually pretty nice. Like some NeXTStep-OSX monstrosity cooked up in a ominous bavarian castle.

Gaim looks ok with the gtk2step theme, but theming can only fix so much.

Re:gaim UI

[Anonymous Coward]

Just stretch the "account status panel" down to the "global status button" so that you can't see it.

Get the book - it's great

[mustafap]

I've read Seans book about developing Gaim. It's a great story.

This guy started from nothing - he didn't even know the C programming language.

It's a real inspiration. Well done Sean!

Re:Get the book - it's great

[rolosworld]

"...he didn't even know the C programming language."

I knew it!!
buggy segfault friendly gaim.

Screenshots of the new buddy list anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope it starts to look better on Windows XP (with classic window decorations). Gaim should learn from Firefox's UI team.

Re:Screenshots of the new buddy list anybody?

[TwoTailedFox]

Firefox baseline Theme is sparton on Windows. Now, the guys that made the Noia Theme.... Now that's a nice-looking UI.

Re:Screenshots of the new buddy list anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's spartan but it merges perfectly with Windows. Some passer-by looking at firefox can perfectly guess that Firefox has been developed having the MS platform in mind, while Gaim, in respect to the user interface, 'feels' developed for another platform and then carelessly ported.

Re:Screenshots of the new buddy list anybody?

[EvanED]

That's cause it has.

And pretty poorly too. It has this bug where scrolling the buddy list doesn't update the whole window, and sometimes the tooltips stay up or even spontaneously pop up when the mouse is not in the window. I don't know how much is Gaim's fault though; I suspect the blame lies more with GTK. (And you can hardly blame Gaim for not switching from GTK either; their main target is Linux anyway.)

Still Majorly Lacking

[bigtrike]

Could they at least make it so I can initiate a direct connection on AIM or use all the commands on IRC without installing a plugin?

Re:Still Majorly Lacking

[ghee22]

duede, right click buddy on buddy list and hit Direct IM.

peeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaace

Re:Still Majorly Lacking

[Lehk228]

set gaim to allow sending of unknown / commands

JEP 0027 encryption?

[GuidoW]

Does it support JEP 0027 encryption or are there any plans to do so in the future?

JEP 0027 is a very straight-forward way to use OpenPGP based end-to-end encryption via Jabber. Everyone who has used PGP or GnuPG for their email will soon feel familiar with this scheme.
Right now, the only Jabberclient I know which supports this would be Psi, which is kind of sad.

If no, does anyone know of a Open Source, cross-platform IM-client (supporting at least Windows and Linux) with support for at least ICQ and Jabber and with JEP 0027 support?

Google Talk?

[Jsutton1027w]

I just downloaded and compiled the beta, but I was a little disappointed. Wasn't this version was supposed to have some support for Google Talk? At least, that's the impression I got from this post .

Re:Google Talk?

[Xyl3ne]

It already does via Jabber.

Re:Google Talk?

[Jsutton1027w]

I was really referring to the voice capabilities of Google Talk...

Re:Google Talk?

[trans_err]

./configure --enable-vv note: this might only be in CVS and not in the Beta release.

Re:Google Talk?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used from cvs and compiled it with --enable-vv and used the ilbc library...

It said video/audio support built into... but i cant find where to use it...

pd: inglish is not my mother language.. you language nazis..

how beta is it?

[real_smiff]

just would like to know please before i roll this out on my lan, if it's good enough for general use (by ordinary people), or if i should wait for beta2 or whatever. just tried it and like the cool scrolling etc. many thanks for any advice on stability/crash bugs/regressions from 1.5. thanks!

Re:how beta is it?

[javabsp]

It's generally good enough. I've been running cvs for a couple weeks and no crash yet (I am not a heavy user though)

Re:how beta is it?

[One Div Zero]

It's stable, but the features are probably going to change a lot before they call it complete.

I'd suggest waiting until they release a stable version, just so you don't have to annoy everyone on your LAN by constantly updating it.

My Thoughts

[Trip Ericson]

After spending over an hour trying to get it to compile with the voice/video support only for make to choke on something in mediastreamer, I did get it running fairly easily after that. (Fedora Core 4, KDE)

My first impressions are mixed. There seems to be a bug in the handling of the new away window on the buddy list, as it has completely vanished on me once and sometimes it contains the message-window-style formatting bar which by itself suddenly vanishes.

I'm also annoyed at the size of the status buttons. I shrunk the ones for the individual protocols all the way down and got rid of them, but there's still that giant one and it would be nice if it were smaller.

I love the little effect where new messages "scroll up" from the bottom, as though the text entered is moving right up into the window. I've seen numerous complaints about it, but I think it's very neat.

File transfers work now in AIM. FINALLY. Previously, I'd had a 20% success rate, primarily when I disabled iptables. It worked flawlessly when I tested with some friends last night, which is nice because now I don't have to tell them to go e-mail me stuff.

I did get pretty annoyed because I knew the theme could be controlled through Gnome, but from KDE, I could NOT find the Gnome theme control! I Googled, I checked a ton of menu options and documentation, and there was no way to do it without logging out and logging in under Gnome. I thought this release was uglier than past releases and this was the first time I'd tried to theme it.

I still think Guifications needs to be included as standard rather than a plugin. Every other client I've used has it standard, and in fact, some like Trillian even have it better, displaying the message text rather than just "xyzperson has messaged you."

Overall, I'm quite impressed, but there's quite a bit of work that needs to be done I'd think.

Re:My Thoughts

[T-Ranger]

The -vv support may or may not make it into the final 2.0. I IM'd Sean Egan about it, and while he has more work done in his own tree, he was rather aloof when I suggested he check it into SF cvs.

Re:My Thoughts

[mattwarden]

There's a plugin to control the gtk theme options. I don't know if this is there only for people using gnome, but since it just edits a config file, I don't know why you wouldn't have it under K too.

Re:My Thoughts

[mikaelhg]

/usr/bin/gnome-theme-manager

Re:My Thoughts

[Trip Ericson]

Yes, I did finally discover that, though by the time I did I had already signed in through Gnome to do it.

Re:My Thoughts

[blue1]

File transfers still don't work for me. I attempt to send a file and GAIM crashes. Doesn't matter what protocol. Even if it's only to someone on my intranet.

Give Users more Options

[illegalien]

Great work on the backend, but the GUI needs more options.

I understand the need to simplify the prefs menu, but I would have preferred a novice/advanced mode setup. Hopefully there will be a "Customize Gam 2.0" plugin out soon. :-/

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

[jtorque]

Really, this is the beauty of open source software. While I can't say I like the new user interface and will probably be uninstalling this version shortly, I'm sure it won't be long until someone creates a fork of the old code base and establishes a new project. Based on the old usability of Gaim, it should be fairly easy to incorporate new Gaim features into the project, without having to use all their new UI modifications and crippled usability. Then we can have the power of Gaim the way we want it.

I recall this kind of thing happening in the Ultima Online scene, where a huge change in UOX3 development caused many others to create their own server emulators based on the old code base. It was pretty cool to see and a lot of good came from it.

Re:Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

[javabsp]

Rather than saying that, it would be better for you to be more specific on what the problems are.
Couple projects have tried to fork gaim, now you don't really hear any of them. I think that speaks for itself.

Re:Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

[jtorque]

Many of the problems are the same things that other people have mentioned on this thread:

-Obnoxious buttons on the bottom of the buddy list
-The strange way the account dialog was split up
-Removal of ability to choose how you want to be idle
-Preferences and missing options (it had such a nice layout before, why tabs now?)
-The chat window seems very awkward from previous versions

I know it's still just beta, but I don't like the direction it's heading. Of course, when the first GTK2 versions of Gaim were coming out, I was thinking pretty much the same thing. Over time, things seemed to get better, though. So maybe it's just a matter of time before I'll get back into the new versions again.

Re:Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

[One Div Zero]

"Couple projects have tried to fork gaim, now you don't really hear any of them."

Adium is the single most popular non-bundled IM client for OS X.

It is essentially a gaim fork.

Re:Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

[javabsp]

It is not. Talk to the adium developers.

and you are?

[rolosworld]

if you want new features on gaim.. create them.. or pay someone to do so.

It's too bad GTK on Windows sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Gaim is pretty decent on linux, but on Windows it's slow to resize windows and frequently hangs. When you connect via remote desktop and gaim is already running, it hangs. Sometimes it doesn't properly detect that you've stopped dragging something and have dropped it.

msn

[__aahlyu4518]

So... about 99% of the people I know (I'm hangin' with the wrong crowd, don't remind me) use msn.. and with that I mean the Microsoft client. The have all kinds of neat stuff like the emoticons that you can show other people, audiochat, videochat, a buzzer (which is very annoying btw) and, nudges, winks... which don't have any real function besides being considered a MUST HAVE amongst almost every msn user. And not 1 microsoft-client msn-alternative comes even close in implementing this. And Gaim 2.0 probably won't either.

I know.. if it ain't there.. do it yourself... but I'm not capable of coding such a thing.
Maybe the specs are closed... whatever. Fact is that at this moment for a lot of young people.. msn is the killer app.

Re:msn

[borsi]

Actually, there is a client, that implements almost every MSN messenger feature (winks, nudge, custom emoticons, wideochat, drawing, etc.): Mercury. It's closed source, but I've got a very good experience with it (I recommend the newest beta version). It can be downloaded from http://mercury.to/ It has been written in Java, so it's (almost :)) platform independent, inluding Windows,OS X, Linux.

Re:msn

[Anonymous Coward]

Nudge support and custom emoticons has been implemented. Wink support has been coded, but was taken out due to it's dependency on Macromedia Flash. Audio and Video is coming Real Soon Now. As are personal message/status messages and "currently playing media".

Basicaly, all the "new" features are in various stages of "completed, but buggy" or "being worked on".

So, Gaim is close to having the features you describe, but you do raise valid points :)

Re:msn

[jb.hl.com]

The latest Kopete works a treat. I tried it and it even handled now playing media properly (with amaroK). Give it a go.

Re:msn

[Windwraith]

Actually. I have never used such features in my daily usage.
I talk to most of my friends without no problem...you know, this is a program used to communicate, not to exchange annoying gimmicky graphics or silly window-shaking.

Re:msn

[CoolGuySteve]

I find the worst is not being able to see people's second name field. A lot of people I know use it to organize where they're going that night or to state what has happened to them recently and I'm left in the dark because I have a Mac.

"Where's this person?"
"Oh, they're out of town for the weekend, didn't you read their msn name?"

That extra name field is really important for a program that's meant to communicate with your friends. Even Microsoft's Mac client doesn't support it which is incredibly annoying.

Re:msn

[Sergej]

Yeah, and it will kill you.

Re:msn

[The Cydonian]

Look at the positive side; you know when someone's blocked or deleted you, or when someone's closed their conversation windows!

Re:msn

[Anonymous Coward]

I use miranda http://www.miranda-im.org/ pretty feature rich and full of plugins, seems to cover just about every msn feature that myself or most of my friends use.

Re:msn

[__aahlyu4518]

ok,didn't know that. Thanx

Re:msn

[__aahlyu4518]

Alright! Didn't hear about that one :-) I'll go try it. Thanx !

Re:msn

[xmda]

This is an extremely clever stragegy by Microsoft. Just dump tons of über-cool gimmicks in MSN, which all kids loooove. This will lock in the kids into Windows, and even if their parents wanted to try GNU/Linux or just some FOSS IM-client, their kids would scream loudly. I know, it has happened to a collegue. Really evil...

Linus quote:

[rolosworld]

"Just use kopete."
-Linus

KDE wallet and Kopete

[Colin Smith]

The KDE guys have solved this by having an open once "wallet".

Screenshots of Gaim 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

In case anyone is interested, here are some screenshots for GAIM 2.0.

http://process-of-elimination.net/wiki/Gaim_CVS/2. 0_Preview_with_Screenshots

You've tripped my pet peeve

[heinousjay]

Exactly which verb is 'Firstly' modifying?

Windows CVS builds

[DrIdiot]

Here's a website that makes windows executable builds from CVS - 2.0.0beta is the latest build:
http://geddeth.dk/downloads/gaim/

I have to say... it's quite impressive. I went ecstatic when I found out file transfers were working.

MOD PARENT UP

[mattwarden]

Do you have a link to the message (I assume on an email list)?

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[javabsp]

https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=3 481994

Sounds per user

[Rinnt]

One of the things I miss from the ICQ days was being able to set specific sounds on a per user basis. For example, every person that singed on would have their own unique sound played. So if I was in the other room, I would know who was coming and going instead have having to check the screen each time I heard an event. I know it may seem like a minor detail, but does anyone know if will potentially be implemented in GAIM?

Re:Sounds per user

[javabsp]

Right click a user->add buddy pounce.

Re:Sounds per user

[wa1ter]

Smartear might do what you want (haven't tried it but from the description it sounds like it's what you're looking for).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Kopete has its own share of problems...

[Freggy]

While Kopete could be a very nice application (it has some great plug-ins, particulary I like the listening-to plug-in), it has some serious flaws. Usability wise, I think it is overcomplicated, with protocol actions in a submenu of the right click menu (I have seen a screenshot of Gaim 2.0 showing the same, uh oh...), and too much toolbar buttons while Kopete does not show tool text by default... Furthermore it is rather buggy. I have Kopete from KDE 3.5 crashing often when leaving IRC chats, on IRC, it considers almost all messages as "priority messages", and makes a sound for that, MSN avatar sending does not work according to my buddies, in some cases, it only downloads avatars when starting a chat with somebody,... Most of these problems have been reported on kde's bugzilla, but I haven't seen much progress lately. It seems developers do care more about adding yet more (useless and buggy?) features instead of fixing current problems.

In short:

[Anonymous Coward]

UUgly Jabber icons (what is that red thinh? a bulb?
Autoprofile plugin does'nt work (how to put fortunes on away in desc?)
No way to copy/click on plugin's homepage.
Besides - WHAAT? NO WEBCAM SUPPORT? Major bummer.
Yes, ineroperability with G.Talk is important.. but -vv stuff could be pluginized maybe?

Re:In short:

[EvilSporkMan]

Major version number bumps mean that the plugin API has changed - give the autoprofile guys a few days to get their shit together. I've got a shell script profile plugin that I'm using internally...now that Gaim 2 is out I think I'll pretty it up and steal some of the autoprofile GUI and release it. =D

What for?

[Anonymous Coward]

More options aren't inherently good. In fact, unless they're for something that different people legitimately want to have different ways, they're almost certainly bad. (As an absurd example, they could add a "Number of pixels between this label and that widget" option, but that wouldn't help anybody, and make it worse for pretty much everybody.)

What exactly do you want to do? Saying "needs more options" isn't helpful.

Re:What for?

[EvanED]

There are a number of options that have been removed. Two that some have specifically lamented missing are setting what defines when you are idle (Gaim or Windows/X usage) and whether talking while away sets your status to back.

What about the others?

[Crosma]

Gyache Enhanced (YIM!) and aMSN (MSN, obviously) both support video. Rather well too.

Re:What about the others?

[Anonymous Coward]

aMSNs support is rather buggy though (probably has endian bugs judging from the colors on my ibook running linux). And none of them support firewire cams. Although i can emulate v4l.

No!

[wicka_wicka]

Oh god. This is terrible. They've ruined the whole thing. Why did they have to go and try to make it look like AIM. There is a reason people use Gaim instead. Now I am forced to decide whether I want to use the new Gaim, with one of the worst interfaces I have ever seen, or stick with 1.5, which doesn't support file transfer. Thanks for ruining a good thing.

Re:No!

[javabsp]

How is gaim 2.0.0 more like gaim than 1.5.0?

Re:No!

[wicka_wicka]

That didn't make any sense.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

How is gaim 2.0.0 more like AIM than 1.5.0?

(not GP)

Re:No!

[wicka_wicka]

It's just the way that they've got the buddy icon by the convo box, and how the buddy list is now so cramped with stuff at the bottom, they should stick with the reason people use it and not make such a drastic overhaul in one release.

Re:No!

[NeoChaosX]

Convo box? I don't see any buddy icon by the convo box. In fact, the screenshot only shows Buddy Icons in the Buddy List ,and that feature has always been something that can be switched off, although it's been enabled by default in Gaim for as long as I can remember, and there's nothing that indicated that that option has been taken away. What's wrong with a little eye candy that's always been there to begin with, and that can be disabled?

Re:No!

[wicka_wicka]

Well then you're blind. It's to the left of the input box when you're talking to someone. The person who took the screenshot probably shut it off, which you can do, but this setting isn't remembered. The only positive thing is seeing the icons when you hover on a name. And much of it isn't eye candy: they new Away message controller is just bad design, and much of the settings have been removed or moved.

Yahoo file transfer

[temcat]

still doesn't work for me. Which sucks :-(

Can't use Miranda, since it refuses to work for me on a restricted account. Can't use Kopete, since, well, I'm on Windows... and I hate Kopete's UI. Though as far as UI goes, these two clients are worth each other - they both suck, albeit differently.

Don't bother installing if...

[Eddy Da KillaBee]

...you're on Windows and you have The GIMP 2.3.5 installed. The version of GTK for The Gimp is 2.8.7, while I believe this version of GAIM uses GTK version 2.6.10 rev a.

Normally this hasn't been a problem in the past, but something (IIRC) about how connections are made and stuff were changed from GTK version 2.6.x to 2.8.x. This basically breaks GAIM since you won't be able to connect.

GAIM looks so promising too! Too bad I can't log in to do anything... ^_^

Re:Don't bother installing if...

[jofi]

Use the installer without GTK. Does 2.8.7 otherwise work for GAIM 2 beta?

Re:Don't bother installing if...

[javabsp]

No.

Re:Don't bother installing if...

[mieses]

Gaim 2.0.0beta1 beta doesn't work with either GTK 2.8.6 or 2.8.7. Gaim 1.5 works with both.
I'll have to stick with 1.5 since I'm also using GIMP.

Option to remove icons from tabs still missing...

[httpamphibio.us]

They took this feature out in 0.8something and no plugin has reintroduced it. Who cares what network the people I'm talking with are using? If I can remove network icons from the buddy list why can't I remove them from tabs? I really don't understand removing features at all...

Not quite what I wrote

[BerkeleyDude]

New features include account status, away messages, etc

You're right, that's BS. But that's not quite what I submitted. I wrote this:

... account status, away messages, etc. completely rewritten ...

- but apparently, the editor didn't understand me...

Re:Option to remove icons from tabs still missing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever used Mozilla? How about Firefox? Notice how much more successful firefox is than the original mozilla browser (something like 5x as popular now. maybe more). This is why we (and by we I mean software developers) remove features. Very few people want hundreds of preferences. What I find particularly hilarious is when people complain about "bloat" and then complain about missing/removed features in the next sentence (not that the parent did, I've just seen it elsewhere).

Console Alternative to Gaim

[AllDewedUp]

I am fond of BitlBee. It's an IRC-to-IM gateway. When on the console, I can have my IM sessions in the same app (irssi in my case) as my IRC sessions.

Annoying "Feature" still in?

[Dracil]

Does it still do the annoying throw-you-out-onto-the-desktop-from-your-fullscree n-game-when-someone-IMs-you-or-you-get-disconnecte d thing? Because this is seriously the lamest part of GAIM, especially when there seems to be no option to turn such behavior off.

Re:Annoying "Feature" still in?

[ameerirshad]

Maybe you should deselect "raise windows on events", then also make sure that guifications are not selected as well as all message notifications and last you can select the system tray icon, which keeps all windows down from popping up and as such you can play your game!

Custom emoticons

[Spy der Mann]

Why do they insist on NOT implementing them! :( This is the *ONLY* reason I'm still using MSN. So I'm still waiting...

Re:Custom emoticons

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they don't improve the client... AT ALL

Re:Custom emoticons

[psyclone]

A main reason I'm using Gaim is that I never see any emoticons - especially custom ones. I wish the protocols had an option to display plain-text emoticons when I send them.

Side note: Outlook should send ":)" instead of the freaking "J". Man that bugs me.

Re:Custom emoticons

[maidden]

That would be because custom emoticons are lame.

shortcut to read messages

[nazsco]

the *only* thing that still makes me rather windows over linux for the desktop (and it's not games)

i like to see a flashing/message icon. and press a global shortcut key when i want to read it. thanks to that only feature, i'm still on windows + http://miranda-im.org/

with gaim, you have two options:
1) have the message popup on your screen spontaneously, even with manager reading code on you screen
2) use the... *ugh*... mouse... *ugh*... to double click gaim's icon

Re:shortcut to read messages

[uncool]

That in my opinion is the biggest problem with Gaim and why I refuse to use it.

In the past I used screen + irssi + bitlbee at home but then wanted to enjoy the features of an integrated desktop environment and started to use Kopete. Despite some stability problems sometimes, it works like a charm and has the global shortcut key to read new messages.

There is a (sort of) work around that you can do for Gaim involving alt + tab, but it is way too ugly for me and I never got acquainted with Gaim and probably never will be, since Gaim is a clear example of the bad UI of the MSN and AIM clients that all projects seen to copy now. Long live the old ICQ UI, with single messages, not chat mode.

I believe that the only client with a global shortcut key and a pleasant working UI was SIM (sim-icq.sf.net), but sadly it appears rather dead now. :-(

Master password

[phorm]

Well, one way that might work might be to have a "master password" on GAIM. It would be used to encrypt all the individual account passwords (in my case 5+ accounts), and require only a single password to do the initial login.

Re:Option to remove icons from tabs still missing.

[httpamphibio.us]

There's a HUGE difference between adding new functions (the problem with Mozilla) and adding new options. Increasing functionality beyond what is expected or what is reasonable leads to bloat, slow speeds, and makes things generally unweildy. Putting a check box in a program that determines whether or not a 16 pixel by 16 pixel image displays or not doesn't increase file size or slow down the program in any meaningful way at all.

still no invisible login for yahoo?!

[escay]

"login as invisible" feature remains lacking in the new GAIM...i believe this is the one feature that's not available on any of the open IM clients out there...(not even Kopete)...

Re:still no invisible login for yahoo?!

[Dhraakellian]

in Kopete 0.11 (the version that ships with KDE 3.5.0), the "login as invisible" feature does indeed appear to be present for Y!M.

Re:still no invisible login for yahoo?!

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not "remain lacking."

Re:still no invisible login for yahoo?!

[javabsp]

Change your status to invisible, then the next time you start gaim it will remain as invisible (it remembers your last status)

If you're really worried about security

[BMIComp]

Don't store your password at all. It's the most secure option. If you're storing your password, the intruder won't need to read your plaintext password from the accounts file... he can login without it.

Re:Option to remove icons from tabs still missing.

[EvanED]

There's a huge difference between comparing Firefox to the Mozilla suite and the options that are available in version-2 and pre-version-2 Gaim. The Mozilla suite isn't Firefox with extra options (though it does easily expose more options). It's Firefox with an entirely different (and much less standard and, IMO, uglier) UI, a POP email client and Newsreader, a composer program, and maybe more. The Mozilla suite download is over twice the size of Firefox's. It's not a matter of different options.

(And even given all that, about:config in Firefox probably gives you any applicable option in Mozilla, though much harder to use.)

Re: Nobody sane...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone on this planet sane? You tell me...

I know your comment is tongue-in-cheek, but...

[Mr Z]

I think his point is that you can mislead a programmer pretty easily because they'll read the English before they read the C, and when they read the C, the C itself can be misleading. Witness the IOCCC. A programmer who knows their code will be visible to the world may take extreme steps to obfuscate and mislead, at least in the portion of the code that contains sensitive information and/or algorithms.

If you read the binary, you see exactly what the machine executes and no more. A lazy programmer that's shipping only a binary might figure compilation alone is sufficient to obscure the key and the algorithm and thus won't take steps to further obscure the key or its corresponding algorithm. Thus, the object code will likely be very direct and easier to reverse.

For an extreme case where browsing the source doesn't help you one bit, read Reflections on Trusting Trust, by none other than Ken Thompson.

--Joe

Gaim appearance

[Michael Wardle]

I honestly believe that GAIM looks like garbage.

I like the way Gaim blends in with my desktop theme. Neither Trillian nor MSN do this.