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Instant Messaging On Linux 103

Posted by Hemos from the i-freakin'-hate-IM dept.
IceFox writes: "In this first installment of a four part series, LinuxOrbit takes a look at AOL Instant Messaging clients available for GNU/Linux. Kaim, Gaim, and the official AOL Linux client are reviewed. It's interesting to note that open source projects are way ahead of AOL in developing a full featured AIM client for GNU/Linux."
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Instant Messaging On Linux More

Instant Messaging On Linux

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  • Re:How about other UNIX builds? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Insightful? C'mon mods, give me a break!

    Before this gets knocked down for being flamebait, I just want to point out that I've identified fixes to 3 open source projects before to make them cross platform and the authors don't respond because "if it isn't linux, they don't care".

    This is a prime example of the unfortionate backlash of what should be a wonderful thing: open source. The fact that code is freely available should be enough for people, but as typical with the world, give somebody something, and they want more. The fact that somebody can be so lazy as to not want to invest 5% of the time that the original programmer invested into making it do what he (or she) wants it to do is just selfish. This is not commercial software here, it's free. If somebody gave me something for free and it didn't do what I wanted it to do, I'd fix it myself. And if I couldn't, I'd keep my damn mouth shut.

  • Re:How about other UNIX builds? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    More likely, the patch was horribly written and caused bugs, or had negative effects on maintainability.

    I hate getting shitty patches from wannabes who think they know it all. When I reject them, they always spout off on the lists about how I didn't accept the patch because I'm stupid and on a personal vendetta against them.

  • ... or any other IM which does not have the ONE THING that ICQ has over all the others: A fucking systray icon which changes when messages are pending.

    I mean how hard is it? I don't want to keep a window open on my screen all the time and I absolutely do not want windows to pop up on their own. Gimme a systray icon/dock/wharf icon which changes and I can either click on or (even better!) have wm-global keybindings stuck to to pull up a message. Jabber, gtkICQ, AIM, GAIM, EveryBuddy, GnomeICU... NONE of these have this feature. LICQ's QT client does and that's about it.

    People tell me to get so-and-so IM client. "Does it pop up messages?" is my first question. The second is "Does it have a systray/wharf/dock icon?" is my second. If either of these questions are answered wrong the IM doesn't have a hope in hell of being installed on my machine.

  • Re:jabber sucks (Score:3)

    by Matts ( 1628 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2001 @05:03AM (#537663) Homepage
    First off, this is not meant as flamebait, but a general warning - call it a review, of jabber clients on Linux.

    We were going to use Jabber on a project I'm working on as part of the application. We've now decided against that until the clients become more stable and more usable.

    The server I'm sure is fine. I downloaded a binary from jabber.org and ran it after editing the configuration file. I think its still running.

    But the clients were a different issue. On Linux you have 4 or 5 choices. My first try was the Perl client. That actually downloaded and worked pretty well after a very lengthy compile phase (it compiles Tk). But the language it uses is confusing - the jabber client developers have obviously used some of the server jargon in the clients. This made it extremely odd to use. Whereas with AIM it was enter user/password and I was off, with Jabber it seemed more confusing. Plus I didn't know anyone who used Jabber, so I had to try the AOL or IRC bindings. Those didn't work well and/or were confusing as hell.

    Next I tried the Gnome/GTK+ client. After realising the dependencies were spiralling out of control I gave up. Nobody should have to update their entire (up to date Helix) gnome install just to get a jabber client running. OK, I'm exhagerating a little. But it was enough to put me off, and certainly not something we could force on our customers.

    Then I tried the Python client. That proved impossible to download, but the homepage wasn't exactly encouraging about its functionality.

    Finally the one glimmer of hope was the Mozilla client. That installed with just a few clicks and a restart. Unfortunately it didn't seem to support the alternative protocol bindings, so I was stuck not knowing any jabber users.

    In short, my conclusion for now for our project (based on the knowledge of our user's abilities) is that Jabber just isn't there yet on the client front, on Linux. Maybe it will be in 6 months or more. For now, AIM is a great alternative, despite the worrys of AOL's control over the protocol.
  • In particular, I'm bitching about the fact that
    Everybuddy and Gaim fail to build on Solaris systems simply because the code is written without regard to other systems.

    You can say "Well, it says its for Linux" or "GNU isn't UNIX" or some other cop-out, but in reality with these types of programs it doesn't take a lot of effort at the design phase to make it cross (UNIX) platform and still perform just as well.


    The "cop out" is "you've got the source, fix it yourself". Maybe these guys don't have Solaris boxes to try things out on. I'm sure if you give them some diffs, they'll gladly accept your fixes (put them in #IFDEF solaris). Fix it for AIX too while you're at it, since you think it's so easy.
    --

  • Goofey (Score:2)

    by acb ( 2797 )
    I've heard of Zephyr, though never used it myself. The multiple-namespaces concept seemed pretty doovy.

    An IM system I 'grew up' with (it has been around
    since 1992 or so, possibly earlier) is [monash.edu.au]
    goofey. UNIX command-line client (I think it was developed on ULTRIX originally), central server, unique user names, stored messages. No peer-to-peer file transfer capabilities, but it does have a large fortune database and a Jargon File lookup utility...

    It was mostly used by people at or from Monash University, though there are users across the Net.

  • RFC1312 (Score:2)

    by acb ( 2797 )
    Incidentally, did anything ever come of
    [ohio-state.edu]
    RFC1312, a distributed instant-messaging standard that used a simple user@host mechanism?

  • How about other UNIX builds? (Score:5)

    by bjb ( 3050 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2001 @04:37AM (#537667) Homepage Journal
    You know, this just points out a nasty little trend that I see in the Linux development world- people who typically develop for Linux are blind to the fact that there are other UNIX systems out there. In particular, I'm bitching about the fact that Everybuddy and Gaim fail to build on Solaris systems simply because the code is written without regard to other systems.

    You can say "Well, it says its for Linux" or "GNU isn't UNIX" or some other cop-out, but in reality with these types of programs it doesn't take a lot of effort at the design phase to make it cross (UNIX) platform and still perform just as well.

    Before this gets knocked down for being flamebait, I just want to point out that I've identified fixes to 3 open source projects before to make them cross platform and the authors don't respond because "if it isn't linux, they don't care". I can understand if you don't have the hardware to test it on, but at least take a suggestion/patch.

    <grumble grumble grumble>

    --

  • Is there a Linux IM client that can also handle the voice capabilities of Yahoo! Messenger or one of the other services? Yahoo!'s official client doesn't do voice chat under Linux. Would be nice not to have to touch Ameritech's crappy phone lines at all (I have a cable modem).

    Also, anyone know if those Plantronics DSP-series headsets work under Linux? The DSP-500 in particular. They plug in to the USB port. Linux-USB lists Telex's equivalent as working, so I'm hopeful.
  • EB compiles just fine on Solaris. I've even sent in a sound patch to make it work correctly for SunRay appliances. Not sure why you think it doesn't work under Solaris unless you've never tried. It's about a 5 minute compile.
  • .11.0pre's haven't worked on my system at all. They core dump everytime (RPM or ones built by me) I still use the latest stable release and it works extremely well. I prefer it to AOL's client on Windows :)

    Keep up the good work!

  • Question (Score:1)

    by jjr ( 6873 )
    Is there an open source project that is devoted to create a Standard for Instant Messaging? I thought there was some RFC's in progress for this. If some has a few links they could share on that would be great.
  • [waiting for your party to respong]

    glad to see there's something NEW going on.
  • People develop for Linux just because that's what they (we) are using.

    I've come across the opposite problem: I wrote a daemon on Linux, announced it asking for feedback especially on non-Linux systems (BSD, Solaris, etc), and got exactly none. And it was not for lack of interest; I did get a fair number of downloads. So my deamon is still in the state of "works fine under Linux, you're on your own elsewhere".

    Oh well, one of these days I'll have to install FreeBSD on a spare partition...

  • Thanks to some happy hackers.. Gabber 0.8.0 (http://gabber.sourceforge.net) now supports message queuing and Gabber has had Status Docklet support for some time now.. so Gabber does exactly what you want. Besides that, it's a darn good looking app.

    (goodness i hate my nickname on slashdot)
  • While I haven't read RFC1312 and can't comment on anything else in it... Jabber uses the user@host format for communicating with users. Microsoft Messenger does as well. I believe I heard that Yahoo! Messenger does internally.
  • Instant messaging is just another nifty lil' thing that everybody lived without it, but now that it appeared, people gives too much importance
    for it.

    People lived without computers for thousands of years, and got along just fine. Doesn't mean they haven't become very important.

    People lived without shoes for thousands of years, and got along just fine.

    People have lived without instant messaging for thousands of years. This does not mean it will not become very important in the near future.

    You're monitoring your email every 5 minutes; sounds like you're taking a stab at instant messaging anyway, just with a 5 minute delay instead of a 5 second one. If you really don't want to be interrupted, you should be checking your email a couple of times a day, not all day long.

    -
  • Disclaimer: I work on TiK. I'd just like to point out that TiK [sourceforge.net] is still alive and doing _very_ well. Plugins, filters, buddy pouncing, advanced logs and captures, remote administration, weather and stock updates, and graphical smilie support are just some of the features which TiK supports. With options to turn everything off if you want a stream-lined client. (And we had these before a certain other client too...) Not to mention, it's the most cross-platform of the clients I've seen, since it just needs Tcl/Tk to be installed to work. Checkout the TiK homepage at http://tik.sourceforge.net

  • The reason the author did not mention Jabber was:

    "We'll make sure to mention this feature in part 3 of our IM series, when we discuss all-in-one IM clients for GNU/Linux."

  • The Linux community is simply trying to make software more like the Windows equivalents, and part of that is only running on one platform ;)

  • If I want to chat I'll use talk or IRC (depending on their/my location)

    The problem with talk/write is that if you're on a dynamic connection, people can't find you. A lot of people still use modems and dynamic PPP, so there's room for this stuff.

    If you have cable or DSL, this IM stuff is redundant. If you don't, then it's moderately useful.


    ---
  • just an idea.
  • Although the article focused on clients for AIM, it would be wise to mention other, and IMHO superior systems such as Jabber and others.

    Jabber has several strengths over other Open Source IM projects. I'll name a few:
    <ol>
    <li> Based on open standards all around, no proprietary secret parts. Jabber is part of the IETF effort to develop open IM protocol standards.
    <li> Uses XML for protocol and messages.. This turns out to be a powerful (hm.. I guess some people will disagree with this) application level protocol language.
    <li> The scope of this open architecture is much wider than IM between people. Communication with appliances and remote control of everything from dishwashers, ovens, DVD/CD players, RealTime MPEG-2 video-recorders, and so on.
    </ol>

    Before we know it Jabber, or similar XML-based IM systems, might be the emerging standard of "home network appliance inter-communication". (maybe I should trademark that sentence :-)

    If you compare the potential functionality of Jabber with other emerging standards like RTSP (RealTime Streaming Protocol) there is a lot of similarity, and XML-based IM-protocols might well end up being the leading contender for home-network Human<->appliance appliance<->appliance communication.

    I'm probably stating the obvious to many slashdot readers, but in my NSHO it's one of the most exciting developments within the OpenSource community at the moment.

    Any reader who's interested in learning more about this should check out:
    <a href="http://www.jabber.org/">www.jabber.org&lt ;/a>
    and also skim through <a href="ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2326.txt">T he RFC for RTSP</a> for one of many areas where XML-based IM-systems might turn out to be the best and most flexible technology.
  • I suppose you mean 'other character sets'?
  • If you want an open platform for messaging, try Jabber [jabber.org] out. It supposedly supports ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, IRC, and SMTP through an XML framework. From what I've heard from the wear-hard list, it's pretty much maleable to anything you need to do..
  • I don't know about that save for one thing: Jabber is supposedly even better as a communication framework, since it's XML based and flexible. One of the folks on the wearhard list uses it for a variety of purposes with his java-based wearable.
  • Not to be picky either, but I'm assuming you replied to the wrong message. I know it is a platform and not a client, just as gnutella is a protocol and not a client..
  • Huh? I use everybuddy and talk to lots and lots of people who use both AOL's included IM as well as the standalone AIM client.

  • Didn't you read further down? He has submitted patches, and the authors wouldn't take them 'cause they don't care. That's ridiculous and silly IMHO.

  • tik (Score:2)

    by segmond ( 34052 )
    i use tik, which is a client written in tcl/tk, it works flawlessly. i have used it on freebsd, solaris and linux with no headache. since it is tcl/tk, the source is there with you and you can easily tweak it to fit you.

  • I know exactly what you mean by this. I'm working on a port of EveryBuddy for Win32(You can see it on SourceForge), but because of it being made the way it is, I've suggested some fundemental changes to the design of the program.

    However, I haven't heard anything from the EveryBuddy team in more than a month! So I guess the OSS movement has a big problem, because noboddy tolerates improvements/fixes to their projects.

    So instead, everyone who wants a project done starts his own project, so that he can decide for himself what needs to be done. Then he creates a project on SourceForge, hoping to attract someone who is willing to help him without getting anything, or making to many suggestions to the project.

    Now, normally this is not a problem, because the people helping are called employees, and they get paid for their work. However, in the OSS community, your endproduct has got to be free of charge, so you have no way of paying your employees.

    Because of that, only people who find it very interesting to work for others without getting payed will apply to your project. Sadly, theese people only does this because they hope to get something out of it, either coding experience, or a nice reference on their CV.

    So I think the problems with the movement is the following:

    1) Forking(Why do we have x texteditors, x GUI's)
    2) No money(You can't attract professionals without paying them, that simply doesn't work)

    -H
  • That depends on what client you use. mfaim, a console-based AIM client that's part of the libfaim [sourceforge.net] project, automatically logs all your conversations. And it really is more convenient to do things in real time sometimes.

    --Moss

    This is a .sig.
    Now there are two of them.
  • talk's nice because it's ubiquitous, you can use it through telnet, and you can watch people type (which really does lend a different flavor to the conversation). Better still is ytalk, a talk client that allows more than two people to talk at a time. They're both very handy sometimes... and yes, I also use AIM and such.

    --Moss

    This is a .sig.
    Now there are two of them.

  • console-based AIM (Score:3)

    by mvc ( 38569 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2001 @08:38AM (#537694) Homepage
    Any of my fellow X-haters out there (I'm assuming there still are some people on Slashdot that don't like slowing down their systems with things like Gnome) may be interested in knowing that there are a number of console AIM clients out there. The best one I've found is mfaim, which is available on the libicq project page [sourceforge.net] at Sourceforge [sourceforge.net].

    --Moss

    This is a .sig.
    Now there are two of them.
  • In short, my conclusion for now for our project (based on the knowledge of our user's abilities) is that Jabber just isn't there yet on the client front, on Linux. Maybe it will be in 6 months or more. For now, AIM is a great alternative, despite the worrys of AOL's control over the protocol.

    I really don't agree. I was able to install gabber [sourceforge.net] (the gnome client) by just adding one line to my sources.list and typing apt-get install gabber. I find it works just fine. I've tried to install the Konverse client but haven't yet had success with that. The Java Applet client [sourceforge.net] also works fine on Linux; the pure Java Swagger [weatherlight.com] client works, but isn't (as yet) nearly as polished as gabber or the Windows clients.

    But Gabber just works[tm] and is easily up to the standards of the Windows clients. Recommended. The server is also extremely easy to get set up and running. This is often extemely important: if you're setting up a system for communication inside any commercial organisation, you really don't want your messages routed through someone else's server.

    Oh, and, re your .sig, if you want to do XML and stylesheets and stuff with Apache or Jigsaw or WebLogic or more or less anything, really, you probably want Jacquard [weft.co.uk] ;-)

  • We were going to use Jabber on a project I'm working on as part of the application. We've now decided against that until the clients become more stable and more usable.
    Well, everybuddy [everybuddy.com] now has jabber client support in the CVS version. Give it a try.

  • Heh, Zephyr, the grand daddy of IM. Don't you need Kerberos for zephyr to work? Or has someone updated it?
  • FYI, gaim builds just fine under solaris if you do:

    ./configure --disable-perl --disable-gnome

  • GAIM is the best (Score:3)

    by cansecofan22 ( 62618 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2001 @04:03AM (#537699) Homepage
    I have been using GAIM for a while now and I like it a lot more than the official AOL version of AIM or the AOL java version of AIM. It has all of the normal features but it also includes your other IM clients into one package. You can use AIM, Yahoo and MSN Messenger all in one client. It really works well. I would definetly have to say it it WAY ahead of any other AIM client availible.
  • Anyone know how to get the chat window to remember the size it was? I hate having to resize it every time I open a chat window.
  • TiK is good. The only gripe I have is that some things can be slow at times. Like when you're in a chat room, it can take a while to update the window when someone talks, it seems like it 'freezes' for a few seconds.
  • a/s/l ? gotta pic ?
  • Try Jabber [jabber.org]. It is an open-source, XML-based, fully buzzword-compliant IM system. You can run a server on your internal network which people can connect to using one of the many clients [jabbercentral.com] available (such as WinJab [sourceforge.net]). Plus, Jabber can communicate with other transport protocols as well, such as AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, or IRC. This can, of course, be modified at the server level to block access to external servers and/or protocols.

    --
  • The client support for Linux systems seems to be great. I'm using GICU and GAIM both of which seem to work well.

    The thing I wonder about though has anyone implemented a AIM or ICQ sever? I ask this because there are some setups, like work, where you want the instant messaging functionality without the distraction of the outside world.

  • It's interesting to note that open source projects are way ahead of AOL in developing a full featured AIM client for GNU/Linux.

    There's nothing interesting about it. Obviously, AOL doesn't care about supporting Linux. If they were actually concerned about Linux support, then they would allocate more development resources to the Linux AIM client and make it better.

  • This may sound way out there, but with the strong trend towards moving Linux Distribution towards computer-illiterate people, where are the AOL clients?

    I mean, duh, if you want all of those people to user your easy, tailored interfaces (eazel, eazel, eazel!), shouldn't you consider incorporating some sort of familiar environment like AOL into Linux??

    Rami
    --
  • the plugins. You can get a plugin to do just about anything. For instance, many of you have probably heard of AOLiza. Occasionally, I've got a bot running on TheAliceBot. That screen name uses a GAIM plugin [cornell.edu] to turn it into a bot based on the Alice [alicebot.org] bot engine (it works GAIM version 9.20, but not the latest version of GAIM; perhaps someone could edit the source and post a link . . . ?). You can't do that with AOL's IM client. Secondly, you can have more than one instance of GAIM running on the same desktop, each logged onto a different screen name. You can't do that either (without a patch) with AOL's client.
  • "It's interesting to note that open source projects are way ahead of AOL in developing a full featured AIM client for GNU/Linux."

    Because AOL realize it's not important to their business.
  • well, you have full access to source code, noone is forbiding you to fork their projects and port them over to any system you like.

    dont bitch at authors, be gratefull instead that they choose to release their code. its their own choice if they want to maintain ports to other operating systems.
  • Wrong, GnomeICU do have a clickable "systray" icon. And as far as I used it, the client worked pretty well. My favourit is Licq, which didn't have that feature when I last used it, maybe in the new version?

    Otherwise I completly agree with what you are saying.



    --

    "I'm surfin the dead zone
  • I use it to stay in constant contact with my team. Rather then run down the hall or pick up the phone I can jot a quick note and get an immediate response.

    I use it to keep in touch with friends. It's more real time than email but less than straight chat. Perfect for carrying on a conversation while working on something else.

    I use it to notify me when my coworkers in the VA, CA and WA offices get in and are at their desks.

    So no, it's not just a toy. No more so than Email is.

  • I use ICQ so I don't have to check my email every 5 minutes.

    That's why you have a script check your mail (playing gotmail.wav if you have any) and put it in a cron job to run every five minutes.


    Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo [pineight.com].

  • "Full featured" software can still be fast and small if the developers know what they're doing.

    .cixelsyd era sreenigne tfosorciM tub ,seineew eb yam sreenigne epacsteN
    Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo [pineight.com].

  • Why not pick up the phone?

    A long-distance call to the other side of the planet still costs about fifty U.S. cents a minute, as opposed to local calls, which cost two cents a minute in some countries or a flat monthly fee in others. I don't know about you, but I'd rather local-call my ISP than long-distance call my friends across the pond.


    Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo [pineight.com].
  • Partly true. But a lot of Linux developers out there may not have access to "other" UNIX platforms ...
  • Answer: Jabber... www.jabber.org [jabber.org] full featured open source IM server and clients for most major platforms... Easy protocol ( XML ). It interfaces with all the major IM Services ( AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ ). I had it up and running in minutes. Also check out www.jabbercentral.com [jabbercentral.com] for the client side stuff.
  • Do you have any plugins that were compiled using an older version of gaim installed and loaded? Got a GDB backtrace you could e-mail me? Thanks :)

    ---
    Rob Flynn

  • Re:AIM is nice when it works (Score:3)

    by RobFlynn ( 127703 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2001 @06:35AM (#537718)
    A lot of the crash problems have been weeded out. If you find anymore please send me some bug reports. 0.11.0pre4 was released while I was on vacation (after I finally got the server to let me upload it :-P). Enjoy =) By the way, We've added Jabber and Napster support as well. =).

    ---
    Rob Flynn

  • Re:How about other UNIX builds? (Score:3)

    by RobFlynn ( 127703 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2001 @06:37AM (#537719)
    I don't really have a way to test GAIM building on other machines but from the reports I've received it seems to compile fine when you disable gnome and perl support via ./configure.

    ---
    Rob Flynn
  • "It's interesting to note that open source projects are way ahead of AOL in developing a full featured AIM client for GNU/Linux."

    Perhaps it is also interesting to note that this could mean the beginning of the end for monopolies (or semi-monopolies, or whatever the hell Microsoft and AOL are). In a time in which open-source is continually pushed and bettered while huge companies like Microsoft and AOL sit on their ass because the competition just isn't there, it's only a matter of time before that which keeps both of the companies alive is compromised by the free programming movement. All, in favor?!

    (On the other hand, watching Microsoft and/or AOL die might not be a good thing. As much as they own, they are somewhat of a backbone for an industry... gradual steps must be taken in any case.)

  • I used 'talk' since I first used a Unix Computer and I also used 'phone' on an even older VMS computer. So what's so great about this IM that even Nasdaq is affected by it?
  • For those of us who think of X as being just a way to manage piles of terminals, there are some pretty nice command line alternatives to the usual gui bloatware, like caim [freshmeat.net], a fairly nice IRC-like cli AOL messanger clone which i've been using for quite awhile. While it still needs some development work to make handling multiple conversations more bearable, it's a good alternative to the gui apps (and the ability to get on AIM from anywhere in the world using a telnet client comes in quite handy for those of us who live online and hate waiting for buggy java applets to download)

    It's encouraging to see that CLI apps are still being developed by small groups of rebels. I've always found the command line to be infinitely more efficient; once the learning curve of familiarizing one's self with commands has past, feeding a quick string of keys to an app will always be more efficient then the current mouse-centric gui environments (though I look forward to the days of eye tracking and other, more natural command interfaces)

  • I used to use TiK (http://tik.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]) via HTTP proxy. Worked perfectly.
  • The link for Jabber is http://www.jabber.org [jabber.org]. Decent program, IMHO.

    -Forager

  • Does anyone know what happened to the multi-vendor spec that was proposed last summer as a counter to AIM? Seems nothing has happened since the first couple of press releases.

    Was it a real developmental entity, or just a lot of marketing and political posturing?

    It would be wonderful to have a standard transport mechanism across devices and different types of nets. It appears that IETF does not consider IM to be a very high priority.

    The link is here [imunified.org].

  • Everybuddy! (Score:4)

    by rich22 ( 156003 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2001 @04:14AM (#537726) Journal
    Everybuddy [everybuddy.com] is an instant messaging client for Linux which can connect to not only AOL's toc.oscar.aol.com server, but to ICQ, Yahoo!, and MSN's chat services all at once. It displays very nice status information, allows multiple accounts to be logged on at once, can use ispell to help correct typos in a non-intrusive way, and will log all conversations by Contact name. This means you can talk to "Natalie" on AOL and later on ICQ, then either use the view log function to read past conversations or grep the log file for a specific term if need be. The latest version has other great features, such as assigning sounds or a command to be performed when a contact name comes or goes offline. It comes with sound support, has a very nice look and feel, and is IMHO the best choice in IM clients for linux at this time.
  • I've been using GAIM for about a month, while my wife uses AOL AIM on her Win95 machine. I've had GAIM crash twice in the time I've used it. In all fairness, I usually have lots of stuff going, and lately I've been compiling kernels and changing filesystems-- I'm sure it gets confused. :) I've got the AOL client, but I've never installed it. I've been happy with GAIM. After reading the article, it looks like I made the right choice.

    AOL needs some server stability, however. For a while last week none of her server-located buddies would work. AOL wouldn't even recognize her username/password pair. A few days later it worked fine again (!) How bizarre. Last night chat rooms didn't seem to work. Many members of my family use AIM, and it's easier for all to join a chat room than to juggle many little windows. Rooms could be created, but invitations to join weren't received by anyone. These annoyances seriously detract from AIM's utility and make users wonder if they're doing something wrong.

    On a lighter note, I can't tell you my frustration with my family over their inability to understand that I don't use the AOL client. Just last night mom kept pointing me to certian menu items and features that GAIM doesn't have-- "Help" menus, that kind of thing. I just couldn't make her understand that GAIM != AOL AIM.

    Happy new year to all!

  • Total, seamless integration of ICQ, AIM, Yahoo and MSN in one client. You just can't beat it.

    You can refer to multiple accounts of people by a name you choose, so no matter whether he's using ICQ or AIM, he'll show up as "Dustin is now online". :)

    http://www.everybuddy.com

    Sorry, no Windows port ;)

  • Yahoo IM has native linux and freebsd versions (Score:3)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2001 @05:02AM (#537729)
    They are located here [yahoo.com].
  • I use ICQ so I don't have to check my email every 5 minutes. It's very comfy if u need to clear st. up quickly or to appoint a meeting or so. I really don't like chock-full inbox of dispensable stuff. And ICQ state (online, dnd etc.) is also fine. I don't see it as a tool for monitoring me. It says: 'i'm here if u needed st'. I can be also selectively invisible to someone, if I want to. I don't use it for a futile chatting, why should I? ;)

    I have an alter-ego at Red Dwarf. Don't remind me that coward.

  • I use wmmail playing ~/wav/mail.wav. Hopefully I have SB Live, so I don't have to stop my mp3s in order to "receive" a mail ;)

    I have an alter-ego at Red Dwarf. Don't remind me that coward.

  • Helix's version of Gaim doesn't include the plugins for other protocols. Bad.

    On other subject, I hope the second part of this series (ICQ) makes it to the front page. I have a thing or two to say about GnomeICU (poor; why did Helix choose that one?) and Licq (kicks ass).

  • The current version of Licq is pretty much widget-independent. It runs just as well with the GTK+ frontend as with the Qt one, even with a neat little GNOME applet. And it's much more feature-rich than GnomeICU, and stable too. IMHO it would do nicely in Helix GNOME.

    Disclaimer: I use the CVS version [uni-kl.de] of Licq [licq.org] and the nightly builds [licq.org] of this gtk+ plugin [licq.org] (there is more than one; this is the one that rocks).

  • jabber (Score:3)

    by _ganja_ ( 179968 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2001 @04:25AM (#537734) Homepage
    What about jabber, that can interface with AIM, ICQ and most other instant messager systems. Its open source and it's native protocol is also an open standard. There are different frontend availible and it supports most platforms (Linux - various i.e. KDE, Gnome..., Windows, Newton, mozilla, MAC, JAVA, BeOS, CE etc..). Most of these clients are released under the GPL however, some are under closed licenses.

    There also working on secure communications by the way of PGP/GPG and a web interface. Some clients already support encrytion though.

    There is also a commercial server avilable with more features than the open source version but at least this project has an Open source server that didn't have to be reverse engineered.

    Its seriously worth a look if you currently have to run different IM clients to keep in contact with people on the various networks. One place to keep all your contacts and the server make communicating between them transparent.

    www.jabber.org is the opensource part and sponsored by www.jabber.com, these guys sell the comercial server.

  • Kit (Score:1)

    by S.I.O. ( 180787 )
    KDE 2 contains an instant messaging client called Kit (http://kitclient.sourceforge.net), though I haven't tried it out yet. It seems to be fairly simple... Screenshots can be found here:
    http://kitclient.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
  • I found that Everybuddy was pretty decent. It supported a lot of different protocols (all that I used at the time) and had a decent interface.

    I seem to remember some problem I had with the way it stored your password on the screen, and a protocol problem with one of the IMs. I think it was AIM, when they were (dont know if they still are) trying to get all the alternative clients off their network, it would connect, show the message of an outdated client, then disconnect, only to start connecting again *straight* away. This led to a LOT of messages coming in, and it was hard as hell to stop it... every time a new message came in you would lose the menu you just clicked... and menus were the only way to forcefully disconnect. I dont seem to remember any "Dont reconnect on disconnect" option either. There was only very rudimentory ICQ support, a large subset of features werent implemented, to keep the UI the same for all protocols I assume.

    ---
  • Why not stick with Gopher, it does almost the same thing, and all the standards are in place.

    ---
  • I'll readilly admit that I haven't used it, but can anybody answer me why I would want to?

    As far as I can make out IM systems are just like e-mail systems except I can see if the person at the other end is around at the time.

    If I want to chat I'll use talk or IRC (depending on their/my location), and e-mail is perfectly fine for messages.

    If people are around at the time then they'll normally answer an e-mail in a couple of minutes. It's not as if e-mail is based on dial-up UUCP connections anymore (as a rule).

    So what's so great about IM?

    Paul
  • Well, what I do on Solaris is to run:

    /bin/appletviewer http://toc.oscar.aol.com/tic.html &

    You could put it in a shell script or whatever. In anything else, including Windows, BSD, AIX, and Linux, you can just go to http://www.aol.com/aim/aimexpress.html with a java enabled browser and you are running AIM. It works well enough, doesn't require you to download anything, and you have your buddy list on any computer you go to. I use it instead of the windows client as well since it has all the features I use. I only wish there was something just as easy for ICQ on Solaris now.

  • with jabber you can use all the clients you want. aim, icq, msn, yahoo, irc, and some other stuff. plus its all server side stuff so your contact list(called a rooster) and options are saved on the server so you can access the same list and options from any computer.

    for linux gabber [sourceforge.net] is one of the best clients...

  • you cant use everybuddy if you want to type in other languages (like korean).

    other than that, its a great messanger.

  • Next I tried the Gnome/GTK+ client. After realising the dependencies were spiralling out of control I gave up. Nobody should have to update their entire (up to date Helix) gnome install just to get a jabber client running. OK, I'm exhagerating a little. But it was enough to put me off, and certainly not something we could force on our customers.

    I have also had difficulties with dependencies, as I use Redhat 7.0; since Gabber is written in C++ and depends on libraries written in C++, the move to gcc `2.96' hit it hard. However, you can get a statically linked binary [sourceforge.net] of the latest Gabber (0.8.0), which has no crazy dependencies, from the download page [sourceforge.net] (or the above link).

  • I just want to point out that I've identified fixes to 3 open source projects before to make them cross platform and the authors don't respond because "if it isn't linux, they don't care".

    We're more likely to believe you if you tell us what the projects are... Otherwise, it just looks like you're bragging about something that isn't true.

    Ranessin
  • They should really look over that. GAIM supports file transfers, and shows what services they have. Erm...and does anyone know what happened to direct connection support that was in pre2(I think it was 2)?
  • Wow, that is out there. I'm assuming you have either installed or use Linux. If this is the case, you know that the installation part is not quite tailored to the computer illiterate. I am an employee of AOL (I have nothing to do with software design, or programming there) and one of the major points we hear every day is the target audience that we create content for. These people are generally not the type to be adventurous with their computers and are usually the type who knows absolutely nothing about computers. Many of these people don't know what an operating system is, and think that setting up Outlook Express is a momentous achievement. These are not the people who even know that there is an alternative to windows, so getting around to installing and using Linux is far from conceivable to these people. AOL is not a software company, even though they like to pretend they are by putting "point oh" after the names of their software. They don't have the time or desire to make a Linux version of the client, and we should be very very glad. If they did, it would be bloated, unstable, and would be released as binary only, so fixing it would be impossible. Linuz users also know better than to use a product like AOL. I guess it's time for me to find a new job soon huh? :P
  • I believe this is already in the works. They are making a client to use under Linux or they are making a AOL only netpliance(?) running Linux. If I can find the link, I'll post it here. Although, I could have sworn it was mentioned here on Slashdot.

  • you're wrong about GnomeICU. It has a gnome panel applet that flashes when you receive a message and has an option to automatically popup new messages
  • Why would anyone use TALK? thats one of the first services I disable in inetd. Sometimes it takes a while for IRC servers to let you on if your IP doesnt resolve and there's always bans on IP's too. and there's also about 1000 IRC servers out there. And it's a pain to talk in 'real time' thru email. You old fuddy duddy's just don't get it by bashing Instant Messaging. We want instant gratification, NOW.
  • because the company is called helix GNOME and gnomeicu uses gnome-libs. licq's best frontend uses qt. there is a good gtk/gnome frontend to licq, though the last time I tried it, it crashed a lot and was a bitch to compile correctly.
  • hmmm...

    "Applet TIC can't init: NEW"

    *walks over to Jabber server*
  • Bantu [bantu.com] provides a complete web-based (Java) IM client, that integrates with Yahoo, MSN, and ICQ. This client works great through firewalls too.

    Although, they charge businesses for their software, there are many sites that offer instant messaging using Bantu for free.
  • With all of the focus on Everybuddy, it seams that Jabber has been left out of the picture!
    Here is a messaging system that supports almost anything out there, including TwoWay Pagers, ICQ, IRC, AOL, MSN and Yahoo. Clients also work on a large number of platforms... Macs, Linux, Solaris, Web(PHP, Flash, Perl,Java) and yes, even Windoze.
    www.jabber.org [jabber.org]
  • Now, the Linux world can really have the greatest benefit of the Internet...

    AOL Messaging!!

    Masterb8r@aol.com-What are you wearing?

    Hakr-A ripped t-shirt with java stains and a pair of khaki shorts I haven't change in eight days.

    Masterb8r@aol.com-Sexy. What are you into S&M?

    Hakr-I haven't heard of that distro before...

    Masterb8r@aol.com-Sexy-Are you D&D?

    Hakr-I love D&D!!

    Enuf said I hope... Keep your sense of humor :)

  • I hope you realize that AIM accounts are *FREE*. You dont have to get an AOL account for AIM.

    Just thought I'd clarify that.

    Just my $0.02.
  • Not to be nitpicky, but "Jabber" is the protocol, not the client. There are at least 20 different Jabber clients, and I'm sure there's at least one of them that doesn't pop up windows on your screen. If not, it should be simple enough to modify an existing client to suit your needs.

    "PC LOAD LETTER? What the F--- does that mean?!?" ..michael bolton

  • I still don't understand how IM is even useful. Why is so much energy, headlines and discussion devoted to IM? It seems that is mostly a toy without any "real world" usefulness.

    Why not stick with email, it does almost the same thing and all the standards are in place.

  • That is not what I am getting at, IM is a toy for teenage kids to chat with each other. Why not pick up the phone? Are you a user of IM? How do you use it? Personal or business? If for business, how do you use it as a tool?
  • Yes, but there is no record of your conversation (unless you remember to save it).

    I use email to do exact what you describe and I have a history of the conversation and can tell if they actually read the mail or not.

  • I used to use ICQ, but nowadays I just don't use any instant messaging. My company 'forces' the persons to use MS Instant Messaging (cool Windows client) for being ready to discuss with co-workers) and I used everybuddy (that supports ICQ, MS, Yahoo and AOL) on Linux, but now I just don't use. I don't like the idea of people monitoring me, if I am online, if I ain't, etc. If they have to reach me, they try e-mail, that I monitor every 5 minutes. If I want just to chat and waste some time, i use IRC. Instant messaging is just another nifty lil' thing that everybody lived without it, but now that it appeared, people gives too much importance for it.

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