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A First Look At Gaim 2.0
surgicaltubing writes to spotlight the progress towards vesion 2.0 for Gaim, the open source, multi-protocol IM client. "The Gaim 2.0 release is nearing its home stretch. The Gaim team released beta 4 last week, with a number of new features and UI improvements." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.
1. I can't wait to try it out a year after it's release when it hits portage (stable)
2. Maybe by then I'll have someone to talk to and actually get to use it...
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
oh noes :/ no gadu-gadu support?
The article claims that Gaim 2.0 doesn't have Google Talk support . . . however, in this case TFA is quite wrong.
Google Talk is done on the Jabber protocol.
To set up Google Talk, set up a Jabber account, your S/N is your gmail username, and the server is talk.google.com. I have it set up right now myself, and it works fine.
The gaim people could, of course, make it easier to set up GT, but the support is in fact there.
It uses the GTK engine so you could get a new GTK theme. I've never tried it so I'm not sure how well it works.
On a side note, did anyone else notice the "slashdot it" link at the bottom? I understand linux.com is a part of the OSTG but that seems kinda cruel...
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
Gaim is indeed a nifty app, but my main beef with it is that, while it can do a lot of protocols, it can't seem to do any of them particularly well. From what I've played with in 2.0, that hasn't changed much. In particular, Gaim's IRC capabilities are lacking, a lot.
Find me a versatile chat client that does a well-specialized job with each protocol, and then I'll take notice. Gaim is moving forward, but they've still got a long way to go.
Not to mention, I try to stay away from GTK-based apps, especially under Windows. :\ They feel uncomfortable.
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
There is still the cut and paste issue where your text appears (only to you) as the font style/colour of what you pasted until you close the chat window. This problems been around since the first 2.0 beta the devs know about it, but it still hasnt been fixed. There are also some UI drawing issues now to beta 4. Like the status drop down box for me has 3-4pxls of white on the left of it.
Nope, they definitely didn't have a news article about this problem on the GAIM site.
Oh wait, yes they did.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I see you're making jokes already; do you think this is some kind of GAIM?
Push Button, Receive Bacon
I have just tested the new gaim (2.0 beta4) and there is one annoying thing they have yet to fix: If you send messages using MSN fast they will get refused at the server level by micro$oft. MSN messenger stores your messages and only sends like one per second I seem to recall. Gaim does not have this feature, thus if you are a fast writer or write small messages and send them quickly after one another they will NOT go through.
This bug has been present for ages. I had hoped this would be fixed in 2.0beta4, but no. I hope this is fixed in the final version! Other than that gaim 2.0 seems very cool!
-pug
I've been using Gaim simply because I hate the ads on aim and I like many of its features. However, I have trouble sending files and getting direct IMs. Is this a configuration problem, or is it fixed in 2.0 or what?
I've been using 2.0.0 beta 3.1 for a while now. I like it.
My only gripe is that it stores account passwords in plain text, on Windows at least, inside the accounts.xml file. (On Windows, this is located in %HOMEPATH%\Application Data\.gaim)
Surely it's not too much of a hassle to encrypt the passwords? Are passwords encrypted in the later versions of the beta?
"Whenever a programmer thinks, 'Hey, skins, what a cool idea', their computer speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skull." ~ JWZ
GAIM 2.0 is not actually out yet. This is only a beta, and as someone who has been waiting for over a year for the software to be released, I don't expect it to show up anytime soon. In fact, it's reminding me of Vista's development. Very little information, and feature scale backs. The merging of the Gaim-vv code into 2.0 was canceled, the results of the Google Summer of Code 2005 were released right around the time the Summer of Code 2006 was ending.
The longest thread on the project's forum page is still a thread asking about the delays even though it was closed at the end of August. And it has it's share of jerks, but it really illustrates what a Debian-like release cycle this has been.
I used to use GAIM, but now I greetly prefer meebo ( http://www.meebo.com/ ), an IM embedded in your browser (with AJAX).
But no files transfer, nor video or audio! But freakly useful!
Do you know how many wierdo gay programmers would be into that? Totally beats cyber! Better yet, you know how many 12 year old girls would miss-use that on their MySpace page in ways that were truly horrifying? Like, oh my god, skins! And then the sonic dildo pops out..... I'm totally with you here. Great idea. Sonic Skull-fucking. The next non- open source OS I pay for had better have that feature or I'm not paying for it.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
(y)
Do they support file transfers yet, or still just pretend to?
It's rather sad when two computers with the same version of gaim and absolutely no firewalls can't use a file transfer. I think I've had it work when sending from Gaim to Aim, but never Aim to Gaim. Anyway their lack of a functioning file transfer system is the only thing keeping me off of Gaim.
Kopete supports MSN Webcam audio and video, and Google Talk Jingle upport works as well (experimental only)
The biggest problem for me is that it's still a pretty unattractive interface. It's getting better, and I know a lot of people will shout about the skin-ability of GTK apps, but that is way too much effort.
How hard would it be to just tell it that in a chat window I want to _display_ green text on a black background? I don't want to change what I'm sending (since I don't care past using caps to shout at people), just give me a menu option for "background color" and "text color".
(All the GTK stuff, whether it's GAIM or Gnome or whatever, seems to be spiralling into some ridiculous complexities. It's hard for us non-programmers to get a handle on all the time)
You may have run into the bug: Never Idle
I found that this problem was fixed in Beta4. When I installed Gaim 2.0.0, I would never go idle. I had everything configured to set me Idle, but I wouldn't go idle.
The difference between "Windows Usage" and "Gaim Usage" is that Gaim usage is only the time that you spend in gaim, sending and recieving messages. Windows usage means that if you're typing in Microsoft Word, then Gaim will not set you idle while you're actively using the computer.
-=Lothsahn=-
It's "Gaim"
2^5
http://www.rvantwisk.nl/news/item/archive/2006/aug ust/article/ot-compiling-gaim-200-beta-3-on-os-x-1 047.html
This guy posted how he got it working in OS X with fink. Enjoy!
Ok well then he should donate money to the gaim developers or sponsor them in some other way. There are other ways to help out.
Definitely! This is one reason that I dislike the "code it yourself" response, because I think it turns people off and makes them believe that if you don't read and write and breathe C, you'll never have any impact or value in OSS development. There are lots of ways to help out, including straightforward financial donations, which are open to many more people than actual coding is.
However, you don't hear about them very often, and a lot of open source projects are set up in such a way that it's more difficult to get involved if you don't have the ability to read code. For example, on a commercial software product you can have an army of testers banging away at software even when it's in development, because you have human-readable specifications that you test against. I've yet to see any specifications on an OSS project, and many programmers think they're a waste of time. The net result is that people who can't read code aren't worth a whole lot. (Which surprised me, coming from a commercial development where we probably have a 3:1 ratio of non-coding analysts and testers for every actual developer, without counting management or dead weight.)
So I think there are multiple levels to the problem. People need to be encouraged to help out projects and make them more useful, but projects also need to be designed from a perspective that's scalable and doesn't assume that everyone can check out the code from CVS and start doing useful stuff with it. Because most people just can't.
On the user's side, people need to get rid of the lingering attitude that "if I wanted to pay for software, I'd just use Windows." There's a happy medium between getting screwed through the nose for commercial software, and using somebody's work without compensating or helping them, and making it more likely that the project will die. In the latter case you're really killing the goose that's laying the golden eggs.
Anyway, it's a complex issue, and I didn't mean for my earlier post to oversimplify and put blame on OSS devs unfairly. However, in the places where OSS has become mainstream, it seems like the same issues and conflicts come up again and again between coders and non-coding users, and I think both sides have some responsibility for making it easier on the other.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."