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?

[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.

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

[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...

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. :-(

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.

idle budies greyed out

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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: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.

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

[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 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.

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?

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.

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.