Instant messenger?

[Matrix01]

which one is your favorite instant messenger?

[LowSky]

my cell phone

[Docaltmed]

Empathy is, at this point, so entirely integrated into Gnome Shell that I don't see it as a separate application any more, which I believe was the intent.

I want to chat with somebody, I go to the GS "Dash" screen (or whatevertheheck it's called in Gnome Shell), type in their name, click on their icon, I'm yapping with them.

Someone wants to talk to me, I get a notification at the bottom of the screen that they want to yap with me.

I used to use, and love, Pidgin. To tell the truth, I kind of miss having my chatbuddy's avatar in front of me when I talk to them. A little less disembodied that way.

[donkyhotay]

The post office! Who needs these new fangled computer thingies to chat with? Ever since I upgraded to using the post office from homing pigeons my latency has remained about the same (only a few days on average!) but packet loss has dropped by quite a bit. Also I don't have to worry about viruses anymore. I'll have you know the bird flu really had me worried for awhile there. :biggrin:

[BrokenKingpin]

Empathy is, at this point, so entirely integrated into Gnome Shell that I don't see it as a separate application any more, which I believe was the intent.

I really don't like this. I can see why some people think it might be a good idea, but I just don't like my DE to be so tightly coupled with end user applications.

This is why I use Xfce and Pidgin. Empathy was swapped out for Pidgin as the default probably for these integration capabilities, but every time I use Empathy it just seems to lack all the features that Pidgin has.

[guyver_dio]

I use pidgin, it's simple and stable.... and there are loads of plugins if you really want them. I don't, I just want a list of my contacts and a way to talk to them.

[Matrix01]

i will try pidgin...
used to use yahoo messenger on Windows 7,
new to xubuntu....

[hellfire695]

Pidgin because of its multiple chat support, though amsn is nice too

[sanderd17]

Empathy is, at this point, so entirely integrated into Gnome Shell that I don't see it as a separate application any more, which I believe was the intent.

I want to chat with somebody, I go to the GS "Dash" screen (or whatevertheheck it's called in Gnome Shell), type in their name, click on their icon, I'm yapping with them.

Someone wants to talk to me, I get a notification at the bottom of the screen that they want to yap with me.

I used to use, and love, Pidgin. To tell the truth, I kind of miss having my chatbuddy's avatar in front of me when I talk to them. A little less disembodied that way.

This ^^

Although, it could be better, I would love to have a close button on those chat notifications, and to completely get rid of the empathy chat window.

For those who complain about the tight integration of GS with end-user apps, just note that extension developers have access to the complete GS code, so they can make an extension that disables Empathy, but integrates Pidgin just as tight as Empathy now.


Btw, isn't it possible to show the avatar in the chat via an extension or other theme?

EDIT: I have been able to get a custom image in the chat window, I just don't have the placement right yet, and I don't know how to call the image of the person's avatar. But I believe some GS-savvy people know how to do this. Maybe there are even themes around that show the avatar in the chat.

If you want to know which lines to edit, you have to look in the CSS (/usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/*.css) and search for lines with "chat" in it, in the default theme, I get those lines around rule 1316. There you can add a background image with


background: url(link-to-avatar.ext) no-repeat top left;

or something like that. As I said, I'm still searching on the link to the avatar image.

[weasel fierce]

I use Kopete now, since it came with Kubuntu, and it does everything I need. Pidgin and Empathy are both good too. Most of these apps are pretty interchangeable to me, honestly

[jjex22]

Ah simples!

MSN Messenger, circa 2000 - 2002; conducted my whole life on that! parties were organised, all the gossip shared, No one could afford their mobiles, so it was all msn messenger - around 7-8pm on a school night, though it was the age of dial up so you'd be chatting away then one of you would always get cut off and have to wait for them to reconnect, and I remember there being a ridiculous contact limit... something like 60 or 80 contacts for the first year or so, so you'd have to pass messages on through people! soon enough we had 150 contacts, and groups and of course new smilies!

Then Phones costs fell (and became colour!), and people just stopped using it... Facebook came out whilst I was at Uni and it did the same kind of thing... then it went to the masses and the appeal faded for me - it was all good when it was organising socials and SU nights... somewhat of a liability once even your Great Aunt is on there and people are tagging you in photo's from lad's holidays!

[BrokenKingpin]

I use Kopete when I am under KDE... it is pretty nice too.

[Matrix01]

can i send message to cell phone via pidgin?

[guyver_dio]

Ah simples!

MSN Messenger, circa 2000 - 2002

Yeh I loved the older versions of msn messenger, was simple and just worked. Now it's this big bloated bug riddled monster.

[screaminj3sus]

My favorite is trillian 5, but on my linux laptop I use pidgin which is also pretty nice.

I'm not a fan of empathy (lacks important features like AIM file transfer) and kopete's interface is terrible. Pidgin is stable, has a decent UI, and a good feature set. I do miss trillian's excellent facebook, twitter, and email integration though