houseforge recommendation November 2007: Pidgin

[housetier]

About houseforge: In this series I recommend tools that meet certain criteria: they have to be free of charge, useful or fun, and they have to work at least on both linux and windows.

Suggestions are welcome 

The Past

The last houseforge recommendation brought you keepass. It's been over a year since that post, more than 12 months since I promised regular postings.

The present

Shamefully admit I didn't live up to that promise. However, this month I present

The houseforge recommendation for November 2007!

It's all about the internets these days, so this time I ask you to take a look at pidgin:

Short

Name:	Pidgin IM
Purpose:	Multi-platform, multi-protocol instant messenger
URL:	http://pidgin.im/

Longer

Pidgin IM runs on

Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes.

It claims to support these IM protocols (copied from their homepage, (comments) added):

• AIM
• Bonjour
• Gadu-Gadu
• Google Talk
• Groupwise
• ICQ
• IRC (ok, not really IM but oh well, it's used for chatting)
• MSN
• MySpaceIM
• QQ
• SILC
• SIMPLE
• Sametime
• XMPP (a.k.a. jabber)
• Yahoo!
• Zephyr

This is a mighty long list! 

And now for a long list of screenshots (taken from: softpedia, snapfiles, softonic, and naturally, pidgin.im; and from friends), this list is in no particular order:


The End

Pidgin supports so many protocols, works on several platforms, has a cute mascot (similar to our cody), and their irc support channel was responsive. If you are looking an all-in-one solution to your platform-agnostic IM needs, I am positive Pidgin IM is for you! 

Once I get GnuPG into pidgin I will use it for almost all (nothing can beat xchat for irc yet) my chatty purposes, and it is looking good because there already is an encryption plugin for pidgin.

[freznel]

Thanks for this post housetier. I've been looking for somehing like this. Looking forward for more recommendations.

[housetier]

And thank YOU for the kind reply 

[mouser]

Thanks for another nice episode of HouseForge!
Hope to see many more 

[Jimdoria]

Thanks! Nice summary. Just in case anyone didn't know, Pidgin is the IM client formerly known as GAIM. They had to change their name to avoid legal tangles with AOL.

[s2h]

What is the memory footprint like?  Any better than the GoogleTalk client?

Thanks

[jandi]

I'm a big fan of Pidgin, which has some neat features, such as allowing you to group all the multiple ids of a single contact in a single entity.  I would like it much better if it had voice support (Jingle/SIP).  Its memory footprint is not bad, although the Google Talk client is a bit more lightweight in what I've seen so far.  If you want something with a tiny footprint, you can try Miranda.

[housetier]

Isn't google talk the same as jabber? Maybe they stuff in more data in the xml-messages...

I would guess that Pidgin is heavier than GT, but it also has more features for example an OTR plugin. I haven't ever used the official GT client though, so I don't anything about it (I don't even know where to download it).

[tinjaw]

I use Pidgin daily. The odd thing is that I never thought to go looking for plugins. I have, until now, limited myself to the bundled plugins. Thanks for mentioning OTR. Any other plugins out there I should look into?

[housetier]

I would look for something that is compatible with/to blowfish, then you could have encrypted conversations on irc with users of FiSH or mircryption. Well this is just the same again: encryption

I think protecting your conversations is important. Even if you don't have something to hide, it doesn't mean you have everything to show.

You might need/want other plugins that "depend" on the kind of data you get: if there are lots of urls you might be interested in an url grabber thingie (maybe it's built-in) ... that sort of thing. Everytime you think "it would be cool if I could do this and that" look for a plugin that does this and that!

[housetier]

Cnet also recommends Pidgin

But here at DC we started recommending free alternatives OVER A YEAR AGO! Just so you know


The whole article might be worth reading, although the "opensource zealots" already know about their recommendations. But it is good to see others say "just because it doesn't cost a thing doesn't mean it ain't worth a thing"

[housetier]

/. has news about OTR too: Protecting IM From Big Brother.

I strongly recommend protecting all your communications, be it IM, or email. Just because you have nothing to hide, it doesn't mean you have to show everything. If you use pidgin, please install the otr-plugin and urge your friends and family to do same now.