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Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

pidgin.im

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Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#81

Post by cpach »

jdlyga wrote: post #49

Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.

I sure do! I used Jabber a lot back in the day.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#83

Post by beagle3 »

kowlo wrote: post #4

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

You are likely to be banned by WhatsApp even if it works for a couple of weeks; they are quite trigger happy if the client is suspect (which has happened with the pidgin plugin before)

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#84

Post by valarauko »

zshift wrote: post #62
jdlyga wrote: post #49

Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.

I had a real Obi Wan Kenobi moment when I saw this at the top of hackernews.

I wonder if he means old Ben Kenobi

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#86

Post by Macha »

jdlyga wrote: post #49

Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.

I miss those days. The issues with a modern client for something like this is that companies are much more hostile to being cut out of the user experience these days. No more is it just passive aggressive protocol changes to break third party clients, they're more happy to ban end users for using unofficial clients (e.g. discord, whatsapp) or require secrets/tokens they can go after third party apps for including.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#87

Post by mindcrime »

jdlyga wrote: post #49

Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.

Remember it? I use it every day. I assumed pretty much everybody else does too. shrug

That said, it is annoying how so many chat services have gone out of their way to break the ability of 3rd party clients like Pidgin to work. :-(

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#89

Post by Macha »

upbeatlinux wrote: post #82

Does Pidgin still store passwords in a plaintext file in your user profile?

This argument has been argued over and over. Either the passwords are stored in some form of symmetric encryption to which the secret is not required to be entered by the user on startup, in which case it's just security theater as malware/nosy fellow users can just grab the key too, or they make you enter a master key on startup, which most users will not enable

The same is ultimately true for browser password managers also. Do you know both Chrome and Firefox let you export all your passwords as plaintext CSV?

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