Pidgin - Instant messenger

1. Introduction

      Pidgin is an instant messaging program for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr.

 2.Usage

        Pidgin can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AIM, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

        Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, and typing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.

        Pidgin integrates well with GNOME 2 and KDE 3.1’s system tray, as well as Windows’ own system tray. This allows you to work with Pidgin without requiring the buddy list window to be open at all times.

3. Install

Windows

          Download the execute file at : http://www.pidgin.im/download/windows/

           Simply execute the file .exe with the administrator rights.

Linux

          1/ Find out the right package for your distro, PIDGIN distribute the package for Fedora Core, CenOS / RHEL :

                    Fedora Core : http://www.pidgin.im/download/fedora_core

                    CentOS / RHEL : http://www.pidgin.im/download/centos_rhel

                    Or compile the source code : http://www.pidgin.im/download/source/

          2/ How to install ?

                    * Fedora Core : Download the package, save the pidgin.repo file from above in /etc/yum.repos.d/

                                              Then you can use “yum install pidgin“, or the Package Manager (pirut) to install Pidgin.

                              P.S : It only works with Fedora Core 4,5,6. 

                                       If you use Fedora 7 or later, please wait for the Fedora developers to release updated packages.

                    * CentOS / RHEL : Download the package, save the pidgin.repo file from above in /etc/yum.repos.d/

                                                    You can then use “yum install pidgin“, or your favorite package manager, to install Pidgin

To install Pidgin on RHEL 4, add the following line to /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources:

yum pidgin http://rpm.pidgin.im/rhel/4/$ARCH

You will also need to install the GPG signing key manually:

rpm –import http://rpm.pidgin.im/RPM-GPG-KEY-pidgin

You can then use “up2date -u pidgin” to install Pidgin.

                              * Source code : Download the package.

                                                          Run the terminal and type : tar xvf pidgin-2.3.1.tar.bz2

                                                                                                            cd pidgin-2.3.1

                                                                                                            sudo ./configure

                                                                                                            sudo make && install

                                                          P.S : I use Kubuntu 7.04 

Enjoy yourself with Pidgin !