Pidgin 2.13 Linux Desktop Instant Messaging Client Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Pidgin 2.13 Linux Desktop Instant Messaging Client Released

Desktop-based instant messaging clients are becoming increasingly rare in the age of mobile apps and browser-based alternatives, but Pidgin formerly known as GAIM continues moving along albeit slowly. Recently the Pidgin 2.13.0 release happened without much attention...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Pidgin-2.13.0-Released

[seijikun]

I don't get why they are fading away. Especially now with that ugly fragmentation across chat-services. But people seem to prefer having 4 applications or websites running, tabbing around. WhatsApp here, Telegram there, Discord in another tab. And don't forget Slack -it's hip!
Then there is this Matrix project that is wannabe-integrating with other chat-services, spouting weirdly formatted bot-messages to somehow annotate whom they came from.

In the end, that Pidgin is dying, is partly the dev's own fault. It took me 1h to find the source code of Pidgin, only to see that it's still using Mercurial - ugh. There are so many nice plugins for pidgin, but all of them are scattered around the web. The default plugins of Pidgin really is of interest to nearly _nobody_. ICQ? I'm still using it - but litterally noone else does.
What they should do is:
- Move their project to Github (They don't have to care if it's proprietary or not, if they die out in their little corner).
- Integrate all of the maintained plugins flying around somewhere into the core, marking them experimental if they want.
- Use the GitHub Bugtracker to gain a workflow that is more 21. than 20. century
This way, it gets way more interesting for Windows-Users. And, as unfortunate as that may be, that's where the people are.

[Hadrian]

Yes, I am using Pidgin on my machines. Mostly I use Pidgin's ICQ protocoll for WAN and Pidgin's Bonjour protocoll for the family's LAN chatting.

[Guest]

Yep. Github attracts contributors. Anyone can do a PR to fix his or her most annoying bug.

[Lanz]

Personally I use KDE Telepathy for Google Talk, and Caprine for Facebook Messenger. I would appreciate more centralization of messaging into a single app. Messaging needs federation.

[dos1]

I recommend and use XMPP with transports instead of multicommunicators, however, the transport I use communicates with legacy networks by libpurple, so there's a place for the project anyway

[holunder]

Personally I use KDE Telepathy for Google Talk, and Caprine for Facebook Messenger.

I highly doubt that. Google Talk became Hangouts and XMPP APIs were cut off.

[Vistaus]

Yep. Github attracts contributors. Anyone can do a PR to fix his or her most annoying bug.

I agree. But most OSS people don't because GitHub is proprietary and GitLab is the almighty new king for them. But I like GitHub's interface much, much better.

[Ignatiamus]

I'm using Pidgin here as well. Both with XMPP protocol for Google Hangouts (which actually works with XMPP, holunder) and other protocols like Bonjour for chatting over LAN.

[Chewi]

Still using Pidgin for XMPP at work (gave up at home, no one cares ) plus the Hangouts and Skype plugins. The latter two can be a little flaky logging in sometimes but they generally work.