Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client • Hacker News Board

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#11

Post by albertzeyer » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

Adium (https://adium.im/) used to be the MacOSX native version (port) of Pidgin. It seems they still recommend it. However, Adium seems kind of dead? Last commit (https://github.com/adium/adium/) was in 2016.

I build a MacOSX app bundle for the original Pidgin long time ago (https://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin-macosx/). At that point in time, this was not so trivial, as the GTK support for native MacOSX was experimental (http://www.gtk-osx.org/). You could simply use the X11 GTK version but I rather wanted to have a native version. I have no idea what the current state is with GTK on MacOSX. This Pidgin build is obviously very outdated now (from 2009), and probably does not run on recent MacOSX versions (they are frequently breaking backward compatibility...).

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#12

Post by hestefisk » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

Does anyone know if the WhatsApp plugin works?

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#13

Post by azhenley » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

Two days ago Beeper, a (almost?) universal chat app, was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#14

Post by tootie » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

There's been such an enormous amount of churn in the IM client market for an industry that hasn't seen significant innovation since the days of dial-up.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#15

Post by swiley » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

c0wb0yc0d3r wrote: post #8

brightball wrote: post #2

This is exciting! I thought Pidgin had died off, but with the sheer number of chat platforms out there I'd much rather install a single Pidgin client to keep up with them. Can it work effectively with the more closed system clients that exist today though?

The link says there is support for signal, telegram, slack, whatsapp, even battle.net!!

I use finch (the curses version of pidgen) to keep up with people on discord from tmux. The only closed platform it doesn't seem to work with that I use is imessage.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#16

Post by turlando » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

When XMPP was quite widespread and lots of my friends used it Pidgin was my trusted software. I'm very happy it's still being maintained and to see lots of plugin for new IM protocols/services (Telegram for instance).

It's a pity that the font on the new website is too thin for me and very hard to read :\

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#17

Post by Rooster61 » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

Considering this is open source (which I'm assuming includes the plugins), wouldn't this be a much better alternative to the native apps on mobile? Curious as to why this hasn't been ported to Android/iOS. I'd much prefer this over apps that need permission to my blood type to function.

Pidgin was great back in the day for convenience, but there is a legitimate argument to be made for privacy here too.

EDIT: It just occurred to me that this would probably work on linux phones. Anyone with a Pinephone or Librem 5 tried this?

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#18

Post by _joel » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

Probably the most seamless chat client I used (XMMP, IRC, etc) years back. Not used it in years, will check it out again.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#19

Post by lostmsu » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

rukshn wrote: post #10

I can remember how I was able to chat with my Facebook friends with Pidgin, those were the days. I don't think Facebook will allow any client to support chat like they used to do back in the days, unless you do some wired bridging hacks like you have to do in Matrix Edit - fixed typo

I still use Messenger via Pidgin.

My biggest gripe is lack of support for latest Unicode emoji.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#20

Post by flatline » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

kowlo wrote: post #4

I had no idea Pidgin still worked. I see support for WhatsApp and Signal, going to check it out now!

I used it for years up until about two years ago. The UI is from ca. 2000, it is okay for one on one chat and that’s about it. I honestly like IRC clients much better. The world has been taken over by slack and its clones for a reason.