IM, Pidgin, Amsn and the others

I'm a Pidgin (former Gaim) lover. I've been using it for 3 years now. In 2001 we were all using ICQ in the university residences, even to talk to our neighbour (and even if our doors were open, shouting wasn't the way to communicate at that time. Internet was!)

And then 2004 the new promotions arrived and brought us MSN, so we had to stay in the progress and switch. But I didn't want to have 17 different IM softwares on my computer, so Gaim was the solution: one platform to talk to all my friends at the same time, even if they are talking via icq, msn, or yahoo. Well, I must say, I started with Trillian, but it's not an open source software (even if it's free), so I choose the open source one.

And I'm very happy with my Pidgin, I can talk to my world of friends, and many at the same time without a big bunch of windows (tabs are the best things on earth ;)).

But today another technology gap to face: Pidgin doesn't support webcam conversations. Argh !! It's planned in the 3.0 release, but for when? Please don't ask!? Luckily, if you are like me, a Linux user, and you would like to see your friend (or them to see you) while sending them messages, then you've got to urpmi (i.e. install) AMSN.

The webcam is working with AMSN. There is no sound, but the image is good and clear, so it's worth it. But I can't wait for my Pidgin to be the best again !! And of course my Pidgin groups are not appearing in Amsn...