Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client • Hacker News Board

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#211

Post by astura » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

clint wrote: post #195

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does not everyone still use it? I and most of my friends do. They are also responsible for my favorite bug report ever: https://bugs.gentoo.org/35890

Everyone I know stopped using AIM over a decade ago and by even 5 years ago Google Chat and everything else emptied out in favor of iMessage, Whatsapp, Signal etc...

AIM shut down more than three years ago.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#212

Post by momothereal » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

naushniki wrote: post #151

My company uses Skype for business(Lync) for internal communication. Unfortunately the official software is not available for Linux which prevents me from switching to Linux on my corporate machine. I know there is a plugin for Pidgin to use Lync. I wonder if anybody tried to use it long enough to tell if it is good enough. I know that the official Mac client is much less stable then the Windows one.

Same thing here! Eventually the Lync-XMPP bridge was shutdown by IT, so we all switched to Mattermost which is similar to Slack.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#213

Post by tootie » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

flatiron wrote: post #166

tootie wrote: post #14

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.

I think discord/slack/teams seem to have shaken up the IM market recently.

Of course, and we'll new dominant players in 5 years. My point is just that none of these do anything radically different from IRC. Channel-based as the primary mode (as opposed to direct) is a bit of paradigm shift in terms of UX, but it's just a veneer on group chats that have existed forever. And obviously, they've all been adapted to web/smartphones as opposed to terminal. But in terms of what kind of communication they enable, it's absolutely nothing new. I could do this kind of thing on Quantum Link on my Commodore.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#214

Post by astura » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #113

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally stopped using it when Google Chat[0] went away. [0] Not that Google Chat, the other one.

Google Talk* There was no product named Google Chat until recently.

Doesn't matter what the official name was, what everyone called it was GChat or Google Chat.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#215

Post by morsch » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

This didn't make me try out Pidgin again, but it did make me ls ~/.purple: Turns out there are some conversations from 2008-2011 that have carried over through my various Linux reinstalls since then. Fun!

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#216

Post by cptskippy » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

I used Pidgin for over a decade to chat with friends across ICQ, AIM, Gtalk, Hangouts, and YIM. I eventually gave up because the chat clients I needed weren't supported and keeping it working with things like Hangouts became tedious.

I don't feel like downloading DLLs from GitHub and copying them into directories to get Emoji support or to update Plug-ins that break month to month.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#217

Post by furyofantares » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

I stopped using Pidgin back when everyone I know stopped using ICQ, MSN, AIM, and it was all down to Gtalk anyway. Hadn't really noticed the re-explosion for some reason, but looking at the list of what Pidgin supports, I'm using quite a few things on the list (Steam, Discord, Slack, FB Messenger)

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#218

Post by SubiculumCode » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

It would be nice if it did inline images, inline web-previews, inline video players, etc, if not by default, then with clear path to enabling.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#219

Post by igetspam » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #77

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.

Does not everyone still use it? I and most of my friends do. They are also responsible for my favorite bug report ever: https://bugs.gentoo.org/35890

That was great. Thanks for sharing. The submitted patch and the linked dupe are pretty great too.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#220

Post by astura » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

Gualdrapo wrote: post #185

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assumed pretty much everyone used a desktop specific chat app that is 20 years old?

And you assumed everyone who wanted a desktop chat app used pidgin and nothing else? Because there were plenty of "multi-service" apps. It's just that Pidgin was the more popular among Linux users.

Yeah, Trillian was, by far, most common among the general public (the non-programming, non-techy types). Honestly, Pidgin was pretty niche, I don't know of any non-techies that used it.