EPIC BATTLE ROUND 1: Pidgin vs. Empathy

[Luke has no name]

Who wins in your opinion? Empathy integrates with Gnome well and supposedly has voice, but Pidgin has plugins out the wazoo and is cross platform, and more established.

gogogo

[zmjjmz]

Pidgin for me:
I don't use GNOME, and I use Skype for A/V chats.

[etnlIcarus]

As I use neither, has someone got a comprehensive run-down of features?

I vote Emesene.

[Starlight]

I use Emesene too. But when it comes to Pidgin and Empathy, I think that Pidgin is currently better... for example, I can install a smiley theme for it that has specific sets of smileys for each IM network. But I can't understand why multiprotocol IM programs don't include such smiley themes by default, and instead they have a single theme for all protocols... it just makes no sense at all.

[etnlIcarus]

But I can't understand why multiprotocol IM programs don't include such smiley themes by default, and instead they have a single theme for all protocols... it just makes no sense at all.

Because the default emoticons from each IM client probably aren't under a GPL-compatible license.

[Starlight]

Because the default emoticons from each IM client probably aren't under a GPL-compatible license.

Yes... but there are smiley themes which are GPL-ed (I think) and they are made to be similar to the official smiley sets. I think that the one in emesene is like that.... or am I wrong? :confused:

[etnlIcarus]

I dunno, I don't pay much attention to emoticons - unless is that custom animated one of the two bulldogs doing it I use to scare off newbs.

Think Emensene uses the same ones as Pidgin.

[gnomeuser]

Empathy long term, integration and what it offers in terms of allowing networking with buddies will be a winning combination. I use it for all my GoogleTalk needs and once it does webcams in msn it will replace amsn as well (which is a truly ugly application, not to mention unstable).

[Starlight]

I dunno, I don't pay much attention to emoticons - unless is that custom animated one of the two bulldogs doing it I use to scare off newbs.

Think Emensene uses the same ones as Pidgin.

Hmm... maybe it does. :) I haven't actually tried MSN in Pidgin, only other protocols, and I remember I had to download the right smiley themes from gnome-look. Otherwise there were only a few basic smileys on the list, that had nothing to do with the smileys actually used in these protocols...

[NET WT]

Pidgin is my favorite, and works good for me. Except for my Yahoo account, which no longer works. :cry:

[MikeTheC]

Pidgin FTW!!!

[bruce89]

People don't realise that Empathy can do all the protocols that Pidgin can do if telepathy-haze is installed.

Anyway, I'm an (young) old-fashioned text-only person when it comes to IM, so Emapthy's fine. Also, Pidgin has been getting a bit complex.

[RATM_Owns]

I choose Empathy only because Pidgin has a huge text bar before typing, then a normal one after you type. It's annoying. :P

[Yink]

I hadn't heard of Empathy before, I've been having issues with pidgin randomly disconnecting without showing it is. I'm going to give Empathy a try. However I have been quite happy with pidgin it does what I need.

[Lightstar]

I use pidgin on both my windows and linux... (wow windows.. almost forgot about it)

The only thing I really hate is the stupid msn protocol, for third-party instant messengers file transfer has to go through the msn-server and it makes transfering files REAL slow >:(

[Polygon]

pidgin is:

more popular

has more clients (telepathy-haze doesn't count, case its not installed by default, and your JUST using libpurple, so therefore why dont you just use pidgin?)

cross platform (windows)


empathy is:

ugly

has ugly icons

only works in linux



the whole POINT of empathy is to intregrate a im client into the gnome desktop, so you can do 'cool things' like have an address book and click on their name to IM them, or invite them to a game your playing, etc. but none of these features have been implemented yet. so unless empathy gets something really cool...its pidgin for me

[halovivek]

Pidgin is doing good for me.

[ithanium]

Voted for Pidgin :D

[RiceMonster]

I use pidgin. I've never used Empathy, so I won't vote. I'm not interested in Empathy though, because I try to avoid things with tons of GNOME deps.

[walkerk]

Pidgin. No reason to be honest. I've sampled Empathy and I read it integrates with Gnome but I don't use Gnome...

[Sand & Mercury]

First try of Pidgin left me with a sour taste in my mouth, so I switched to Emesene. However that began to give me grief lately (something about the contact list failing to sync properly and endlessly giving me one dialog after another that someone added me, then getting an error when I tried to accept it). So I tried Empathy and Pidgin -- Pidgin surprised me with just how much it's improved over time and is now my MSN client of choice. Empathy seemed very half-arsed from what I saw.

[rudihawk]

Hadn't heard of empathy till this thread. Pidgin has been my IM client of choice for a couple of years now (GAIM anyone?). Use it on both Windows and Linux, I like the fact that is cross platform, and it has everything I could want from an IM client. SO pidgin it is. I gave empathy a bash, and wasn't too impressed?

[kavon89]

Pidgin all the way. I just wish they would redesign the configuration and account management windows, the layout and style is pretty crappy and confusing. I still can't figure out what they were smoking when they designed the status windows.

[etnlIcarus]

telepathy-haze doesn't count, case its not installed by default, and your JUST using libpurple, so therefore why dont you just use pidgin?

Because Pidgin =/= libpurple. If telepathy can use multiple protocol backends, I'd count that as a pro.

[bruce89]

Because Pidgin =/= libpurple. If telepathy can use multiple protocol backends, I'd count that as a pro.

Telepathy is a D-Bus specification which mandate the use of connection managers to connect to different protocols.

Pidgin can't and won't be integrated into GNOME, that's what Empathy is for.


pidgin is:

more popular


Windows is more popular.



has more clients (telepathy-haze doesn't count, case its not installed by default, and your JUST using libpurple, so therefore why dont you just use pidgin?)


You don't understand the modular nature of Telepathy then. You have to install the connection managers you want, but that's hardly a bad thing.


cross platform (windows)

Empathy technially could run on Windows, but it would take a lot of work. Also, cross-platform applications can never integrate well into one environment (like Firefox and OO.o)


ugly

has ugly icons


These are subjective. I'd like to hear what you find ugly and which icons are not good.


the whole POINT of empathy is to intregrate a im client into the gnome desktop, so you can do 'cool things' like have an address book and click on their name to IM them, or invite them to a game your playing, etc. but none of these features have been implemented yet. so unless empathy gets something really cool...its pidgin for me

Empathy is only the client. The other progams are/will be integrating libempathy functionality into them (such as Evolution, nautilus-sendto etc.)

I use Empathy and Epiphany for the same reason : they do the Right Thing™ with as little fuss as possible.