Pidgin or Empathy?

[linux12]

So I just downloaded Ubuntu, and I want to set up IM. My version is 12.04, which comes with empathy, a client I've never heard of. What are the differences between empathy and pidgin and which should I choose?

[zombifier25]

AFAIK they are not really different from each other, since they both use the same protocol. However, there's one significant difference: Pidgin stores its password in plain text, while Empathy uses the GNOME Keyring to encrypt its password.

[oslub]

I never really tested Empathy, just gave a look at it, in fact it doesn't seem too distinct from Pidgin, possibly quite similar.

Well, Pidgin works just fine with me. It has all you need for instant messaging and in some ways it's even better than Windows Live Messenger.

In fact Pidgin stores the password as plain text and so you should be careful with it, personally I never store password on pidgin or anywhere else, I use keepass for password management. I have to copy and paste the password everytime I login but it's worth the safety.

If you are used to Windows Live Messenger, then emesene is the closest "clone", providing a very similar graphical user interface. It can be a good alternative to start with. Also it has a portable version.

Anyway I prefer Pidgin because it has some useful add-ons and so far it fits to all my needs, never had a single reason to switch from it to any other, so I would recommend it to you

[lrcaballero]

Pidgin has always been nice to me, very straight forward and user friendly!

Enjoy,

lrcaballero

[codemaniac]

Empathy was there with ubuntu with promise of more security and faster development cycle .But pidgin serves more than enough for me .

[viperdvman]

I've played with Empathy before when the first beta for Ubuntu 12.04 came out.

And honestly, I prefer Pidgin over Empathy. They both have nice interfaces, but Pidgin has more features. If you don't mind keeping your passwords in a text file, then go for Pidgin. If you're really concerned about security, then go with Empathy. They're both nice IM clients

[linux12]

Do they both support the same range of other IM services?

[oslub]

Check out Pidgin and Empathy features webpages:

Pidgin

Empathy

[Томица]

What I can tell you from my personal experience, DO NOT USE EMPATHY! I've been using it for almost 3 years, to be honest never with that many problems. But since 12.04 came out, Empathy simply became USELESS! NOTHING can make it work properly. I'll count just some of the countless problems I'm having:

• Sometimes it just deletes (removes, hides, whatever) some of your accounts.
• Sometimes it deletes ALL of your accounts!
• Sometimes it will bring back your looong time deleted accounts, and then refuse to connect to them (keep reporting network error).
• Sometimes it will duplicate your existing account, and start reporting connection error for the duplicate.
• Sometimes it refuses to connect to ALL of your accounts, reporting all kinds of weird errors (wrong password etc.).
• Sometimes it just refuses to start, reporting some system error or another.

The worst thing for me is that there is nothing I can do to fix this. Restarting Empathy removes the error, but brings up another one from my list. Restarting computer does the same thing. I've tried uninstalling Empathy, deleting all of its files, searching my computer for remainings and then reinstalling it - and the same problems are back the same moment you start Empathy again.

It's been almost 4 months since I started looking for a fix, and I'm finally giving up. Empathy is nowhere close to a stable product. I'm switching back to Pidgin

[Grenage]

I prefer the simplicity of Empathy, but have to use Pidgin - which is very good. For some reason (and this is across several fresh installs), I lose many messages on Empathy, when fresh chat connections are established (or not). I don't have that problem on Pidgin, so I use Pidgin.