Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

pidgin.im

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 181 posts

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#61

Post by Agamus »

dijit wrote: post #12
valbaca wrote: post #2

oh pidgin. Throughout my life (as a millennial) chat went this way: 1. IRC 2. IRC, Yahoo messenger, Aol Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger (mostly based on your ISP in the early days) 3. All + Skype (video!! wow!) + Google messenger. *This was when pidgin was invaluable* (there was also some Duck app for macOS?) 4. Skype started charging and since everyone was on Facebook, everyone moved to Facebook messenger. Text mes…

Similar. 1. IRC 2. ICQ 3. MSN 4. IRC (again) 5. Skype and Facebook 6. WhatsApp 7. Facebook again 8. Still Facebook (very sticky) 9. IRC + Slack (some communities) + Discord (some communities) + Facebook/Whatsapp + Signal + Telegram + Matrix + Zulip Yeah, I think we need a new libpurple.

My path, which began in 1997:

1. IRC

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#62

Post by iforgotpassword »

hans1729 wrote: post #25
mdasen wrote: post #7

I really miss Adium ( https://adium.im ) which was based on Pidgin's libpurple. Adium had such a great user experience. It was built with native widgets and also incorporated chat themes that were implemented using WebKit's rendering ( https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5&sort=... ). It was fast and memory friendly given that it was a native app and the themes were just small templates offering a di…

> Instead, I now have FB Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, and Signal all running and taking up space in my dock. Why don’t you use a matrix client with bridges? I use telegram, WhatsApp and signal over Element. The bridges are not as great as the individual clients, but it’s definitely miles ahead of using five messaging apps.

I tried matrix bridged to IRC (libera) a while ago. It didn't sync back to matrix properly when people on irc left the channel, so you'd try to talk to someone on irc who wasn't there anymore. One time, a person on irc couldn't see any messages by any matrix users until they reconnected to the Network. And IRC is an old, open, well understood protocol. I just cannot imagine that a bridge to eg Whatsapp would result in anything even remotely usable.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#63

Post by eimrine »

zaik wrote: post #55
eimrine wrote: post #15

I love Pidgin. If I want a secure chat between 2 I will forse my buddy to go XMPP OTR

You should also checkout OMEMO which is based on the Signal protocol and allows things like group chat and sending messages to contacts who are offline.

I have tried Matrix not on my wish but it has not worked. Also I like Tox but it needs processor with hardware cryptography and have not use it a long time.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#65

Post by sumtechguy »

Melatonic wrote: post #10
valbaca wrote: post #2

oh pidgin. Throughout my life (as a millennial) chat went this way: 1. IRC 2. IRC, Yahoo messenger, Aol Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger (mostly based on your ISP in the early days) 3. All + Skype (video!! wow!) + Google messenger. *This was when pidgin was invaluable* (there was also some Duck app for macOS?) 4. Skype started charging and since everyone was on Facebook, everyone moved to Facebook messenger. Text mes…

Don't forget Trillian!

I still use it. But all it is good for anymore is a google chat/hangouts desktop app. It was nice gluing all of them together like pidgin.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#66

Post by zaik »

eimrine wrote: post #63
zaik wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should also checkout OMEMO which is based on the Signal protocol and allows things like group chat and sending messages to contacts who are offline.

I have tried Matrix not on my wish but it has not worked. Also I like Tox but it needs processor with hardware cryptography and have not use it a long time.

OMEMO is an XMPP extension: https://omemo.top/

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#67

Post by kevincox »

mdasen wrote: post #48
hans1729 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, I now have FB Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, and Signal all running and taking up space in my dock. Why don’t you use a matrix client with bridges? I use telegram, WhatsApp and signal over Element. The bridges are not as great as the individual clients, but it’s definitely miles ahead of using five messaging apps.

Maybe I'll look into it more, but it feels messy and complicated at first glance. Portal rooms, plumbed rooms, bridgebot bridges, Bot-API bridges, puppeted bridges, double-puppeted bridges, server-to-server briding, and sidecar bridges. I haven't used it so some of this may be wrong and I'm happy to accept corrections. It seems like a puppeted bridge requires me to send the messages to the Matrix server who then has…

You don't need to know most of those things to get started, in general you can just follow the setup instructions for the services you use.

You do need your own homeserver, but for me I run a homeserver just for the bridges, and have my main account on a third-party homeserver. This way at least my native matrix chats (which are far more important to me) don't depend on my home server being online.

I would subscribe to hosted bridges fairly quickly if they were a reasonable price. Maybe $1/month per service? Obviously there is risk here because you are trusting someone with access to your account but to me it is probably worth it. There is https://www.beeper.com/ but you need to move your primary account to their service, which is just too much disruption and lock-in for me.

TL;DR I agree, self-hosting is a bit much. I'd love to be able to pay for it though.

I thought about hosting that service myself but I wouldn't want to run a service that is both against the dependencies' ToS and is playing cat-and-mouse with their attempts to shake you off. Too much excitement for too little reward.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#69

Post by kevincox »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #62
hans1729 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, I now have FB Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, and Signal all running and taking up space in my dock. Why don’t you use a matrix client with bridges? I use telegram, WhatsApp and signal over Element. The bridges are not as great as the individual clients, but it’s definitely miles ahead of using five messaging apps.

I tried matrix bridged to IRC (libera) a while ago. It didn't sync back to matrix properly when people on irc left the channel, so you'd try to talk to someone on irc who wasn't there anymore. One time, a person on irc couldn't see any messages by any matrix users until they reconnected to the Network. And IRC is an old, open, well understood protocol. I just cannot imagine that a bridge to eg Whatsapp would result i…

To be fair your first problem sounds like an impedance mismatch more than anything else. Users come and go from IRC all the time because connections are transient by nature. It would probably be annoying to a lot of people if they left the room every time they disconnected.

Matrix and WhatsApp are both durable with regards to users so this issue probably isn't relevant.

Personally I find the biggest problem with puppeting is the impedance mismatches. For example if reactions aren't bridged it can be easy to miss stuff. This depends on the bridge used.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#70

Post by millzlane »

ganzuul wrote: post #20

I could never come to terms with the tattered and worn user interface experience for an application that is so prominent on the desktop. Perhaps the widget system is glamorous underneath, but to accomplish its job of getting out of the way of functionality... I can feel the RSI acting up from the time when Pidgin was my only option. Thanks for what you did, no thanks for repeat business.

I grew up using windows running the "classic" interface. It's really no different from any other GTK based app.
Post reply on HN