Pidgin 2.0 Released

An anonymous reader writes "After nearly two years of development, Pidgin 2.0 has finally been released! Originally called Gaim, Pidgin is a powerful and robust open source instant messaging client that supports many protocols. Pidgin 2.0 features a completely redesigned interface with attractive new icons and and a new status management system that was designed for optimal usability. Pidgin 2.0 also adds support for universal buddy icon management and smooth-scroll functionality for conversation windows. A comprehensive review at Ars Technica explores the new features in Pidgin 2.0 and demonstrates how to use the new D-Bus bindings with Python to make Pidgin's status system send updates to Twitter."

Comments

VoIP

[utnapistim]

So ... will it support VoIP?

If it connects with GTalk (for example) it would be cool (and long overdue)

Pfft.

[kraemate]

I cant believe that there is no jingle support yet.
IIRC, google released a library for voice extensions to the XMPP protocol quite a while back. When is gaim/pidgin going to incorporate it - so that i can make calls to gtalk users? The other clients like psi, kopete have already done this - why cant gaim?

Re:Pfft.

[Hatta]

Last I checked, gaim's support for file-transfers was very hit or miss. More miss than hit really. Has this changed?

Re:Pfft.

[Ant P.]

Yes. For one thing, feedback implies tact.

Already using it, much better than gaim.

[Uniquitous]

Kudos to the developers, pidgin is a much less clunky interface compared to gaim.

Psychic mode

[Chang]

Does anybody know what the "Display Notification Message in Conversations" option in psychic mode does?

Do that let people know somehow that you are using psychic mode?

I've been using Pidgin (gaim) for a long time but I just turned that option on today.

Re:Any point in upgrading?

[Vector7]

Sure, but by that logic you ought to be using Gaim 1.5. Basically every change to the UI in the 2.0 betas and Pidgin is a step backward. Their bizarre scheme for managing status is horrible and so confusing (and in the betas I've used, outright broken) that I've just stopped setting my status to away at all. They've added that useless Accounts menu to the buddy list, which makes the menu bar so wide that that you can't shrink the window down to a reasonable size without cutting it off (no, a 300 pixel wide window is not reasonable for presenting what is essentially a list of names under 20 characters). In the betas they did horrible things to the conversation window, with pieces misaligned and awkwardly jammed together, but that at least they appear to have cleaned up.

Very nice UI

[Lisandro]

I like the new UI a lot - functionally, Pidgin is the same as the earlier Gaim 2.0 betas with a sleeker look. It also seems a bit more responsive, IMHO. The Pidgin guys have done a great job, IMHO.

PS: Will we ever get the stock emoticons for each IM protocol back again? The default ones stocked with Pidgin are nice, but i always preferred to see the "original" ones for each client.

Proxy problems

[Bwian_of_Nazareth]

I have downloaded and installed Pidgin and it looks nice and all, but it does not seem able to tunnel through our proxy. So far the only IM that succeeds is Miranda which I hate soooo much. :)
The settings that work in Miranda are "" proxy type and proxy name, with no authorisation. No combination of HTTP, SOCKS4 or SOCKS5 with or without my account credentials seems to work in Pidgin. Which is a pity.

Supports MSN Offline messages?

[Robmonster]

I find the main MSN clients Offline Message mechanism very handy when I want to ping a message over to a friend and be sure they get it the next time they login.

Does this new release suport this? GAIM 2 didn't.

Kill pidgin

[diegocgteleline.es]

What I was interested in, was connecting to GTalk for VoIP. That isn't supported right now.

And that's after two years of development. It's laughable that slashdot needs to quote "smooth-scroll" and "new icons" as a major "feature".

Seriously, this is crazy. There's no webcam support - something that messenger has been doing since forever, and it's a major feature for IM. And no VOIP. That's why I keep using kopete, even if it's a memory pig: At least I do have MSN webcam support. It's sad that OSS IM's are in a so poor state.

Re:My Analysis

[Niznaika]

Yeah, along with other programs. That's not really relevant though for those of us working on multiple OS's. Lack of OS X support means 90% of the time, I would not even consider using this. So you want an ugly GTK+ interface vs. Cocoa (or whatever the OSX is using) ? They are both built on the libpurple library, there is no point in allocating valuable resources for porting something ugly for OSX instead of supporting the Adium guys. On the other hand maybe Finch (the text client for libpurple) may work on OSX. :D

Why would you think that? I'd rather have one encryption system and set of keys, which I can encapsulate within any program, than one encryption system and set of keys for each protocol. Is it so hard to integrate something like Off The Record which provides encryption for a variety of IM protocols and clients? Well, if you are talking about encapsulating with any program, it means that your gripe is not with the pidgin devs.

Cheers.

Re:Popularization

[Constantine XVI]

Miranda IM is pretty lightweight, but can be made to be very slick looking if you want it to be via the $foo million plugins for it. It's also OSS, but windows only.

Re:It doesn't support Office Communicator. :(

[Andy Dodd]

If you read above, there are some early attempts at supporting Office Communicator, but none that are very reliable or polished.

The reason is that Microsoft bastardized their SIP/SIMPLE implementation in LCS so badly (in typical Microsoft fashion) that it won't interoperate with any software that is actually SIP/SIMPLE compliant. So lots of IM programs support SIP/SIMPLE, but to talk to MS LCS, they have to break their implementation so badly that they won't talk to anything else!

Text client

[cxreg]

Let it not be overlooked that 2.0 includes "Finch", which is a text mode IM client! (instant messaging in screen)++

I've been using CenterICQ for a couple years, but after trying the last beta of Finch (was gaim-text at the time), I'm sold. It's really slick.