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Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

pidgin.im

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Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#281

Post by srockets »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #189
finiteseries wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mate, the general population increasingly don’t even use desktops or laptops for personal usage anymore let alone a desktop OS specific IM client from the early 2000s.

I would suggest they never knew how to use computers. Computers are general purpose devices, which is lost on the general population who only ever need to check emails and post on social media. Smart phones fit this perfectly. Let's leave the general computing devices for people who actually need that power, just like the early days.

Poe's law?

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#282

Post by ryukafalz »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #143
m-p-3 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good old time, when Google used XMPP..

Does it not still do so? I'm fairly certain that I'm using Pidgin 's XMPP functionality to communicate with others that are receiving their end in Google Hangouts .

It used to do XMPP federation too; they might still be exposing XMPP C2S but federation is long gone.

Fun fact: if you were on a non-Google server talking to someone on Google Talk and they clicked the button to "upgrade" to Hangouts, on your end they would show up as perpetually "away" and any messages you sent them would be blackholed. Yes, that was as frustrating as it sounds.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#284

Post by outworlder »

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.

There's a Slack plugin for Pidgin!?!

I need to try this immediately.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#285

Post by SubiculumCode »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #57

Man. I see the pidgin chat client is at the top of HN, and I was thinking. I use Mattermost, Slack, Discord, and on occasion Facebook, and Pidgin has plugins for all of them. Maybe this would be nice.

I gave it an honest try this morning. Managed to get Facebook and Slack integrated. The Mattermost plugin did not work, and is not actively maintained.

In the end I did not like the experience. inline images/web-previews, etc were not enabled (possible by plugin?), ui was a bit clunky and disorganized. Not sure if that is pidgin or the plugins fault.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#286

Post by ForHackernews »

underlines wrote: post #278
superkuh wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids can't use computers. http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...

a completely different story: when steam engines were replaced with the otto motor and cars became available to the general population, people were able to repair and understand the engines themselves. they had an understanding of mechanical principles. a few generations later, and only car nerds understand cars. everyone else has to go to a mechanic to understand why their car's engine won't start or why it sounds s…

> when a technology becomes convenient enough so we don't have to think about it while it fulfills it's purpose,

Is a tragically limited view of what computers are.

Programmable computers are fundamentally different from steam engines. A steam engine will never be anything except a steam engine. Most of the manufactured objects we encounter in everyday life are similar: single- (or occasionally multi-) purpose goods that do what they were designed to do.

A general-purpose computer is not like this. It can be made to serve virtually infinite purposes. It can be made to do things the manufacturers never imagined anyone doing, and things the manufacturers wished it couldn't do.[0] Almost nothing else has that kind of raw potential for human expression. Perhaps a blank notepad and pen might be analogous.

[0] https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#287

Post by type0 »

ogre_codes wrote: post #270
alok99 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awfully condescending opinion. How about making _general_ computing devices more accessible via UI/UX to the _general_ public? That doesn't seem like such a crazy idea.

> How about making _general_ computing devices more accessible via UI/UX to the _general_ public? That's pretty much what the iPad is. A general purpose computing device but easier to use and with tighter security than a PC. At some point you end up sacrificing versatility for accessibility to the masses.

Ipad isn't general computing device, it's a smart gadget, same as Smart TV same as IoT lightbulb.

This article explains it well: https://hisham.hm/2020/12/10/smart-tech-%e2%80%94-smart-for-...

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#288

Post by rodolphoarruda »

The website has a new look and feel, but there is something I found really annoying. If you go to the Plugin page you might be thrilled (like me) to see Telegram and Whatsapp icons among many others suggesting the possibility of making Pidgin your nirvana IM. Well, the Whatsapp plugin in not updated since 2016. So... that was a real bummer. I'd be nice to review that plugin list and be more precise about what's available and what's not.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#289

Post by trts »

jannes wrote: post #256
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.

There were also Miranda [0] and Trillian back in the day. Trillian is still around but it has changed a lot. [0]: https://sourceforge.net/projects/miranda/

Miranda was (is) awesome, I love that it is styled after the original ICQ client. It still worked with Google Chat and FB Messenger the last time I tried it (<2 years), but the list of people I know who actively use gchat has declined from dozens to 5 or fewer.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#290

Post by ricohboy »

teawrecks wrote: post #152
superkuh wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids can't use computers. http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...

"She reevaluated her categorisation of me. Rather than being some faceless, keyboard tapping, socially inept, sexually inexperienced network monkey, she now saw me as a colleague. To people like her, technicians are a necessary annoyance. She'd be quite happy to ignore them all, joke about them behind their backs and snigger at them to their faces, but she knows that when she can't display her PowerPoint on the IWB s…

Have you ever worked in an IT support position? It’s stunningly common and accurate
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