Pidgin

We use IBM’s Lotus Sametime as our IM client at work. And i like to be signed in all the time even on my Arch machine at home. Pidgin does support sametime protocol, but through an external library called meanwhile. Although most popular distributions have meanwhile in their main repos, Arch does not. It has the meanwhile library in AUR. And due to this, the pidgin in Arch has meanwhile support disabled. But even so, the latest stable meanwhile library (1.0.2) has a nasty bug which does not report the correct online status of buddies. Most online buddies are shown as being offline. The problem has been fixed in the SVN version, but unfortunately ALL distributions carry the buggy version of meanwhile. It took me around 5-6 months to get to the root cause of this bug, and yes, i have managed to fix it in Arch. I’m providing here a compiled version of the fixed meanwhile library (64 bit). I’m also providing a complete tutorial on how to compile pidgin with meanwhile support on Arch. ...

Ubuntu Hardy ships with Pidgin v2.4.1 and Firefox 3.0 Beta5, while the latest Pidgin is v2.4.2 and the latest Firefox is 3.0 RC1. Here are two repositories that would always contain the latest versions of Pidgin and Firefox. Just type “gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list” into the terminal, and add the following to the end of the file. For Pidgin: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ubuntu hardy main For Firefox: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mozillateam/ubuntu hardy main After adding the lines, just type “sudo apt-get update” and then “sudo apt-get dist-upgrade” in the terminal (apt will give a warning about unauthenticated packages, but its safe to ignore the warning and type “y”). After doing this, you should have the latest versions of both Pidgin and Firefox 🙂 ...

I discovered this when i tried to set my status message to “Benazir Bhutto killed..” it just didn’t reflect. Then i tried Pidgin’s default away message “I’m not here right now” didn’t work.. But surprisingly “I’m not here right away” works.. Harsh confirmed the behavior. Seems as if yahoo is blocking some words such as “now” and “Bhutto” in various combinations in a sentence (“now” and “Bhutto” do work as status messages). At first i though it was a problem with pidgin. But then Ankur confirmed that these words were not working with even the windows yahoo messenger client! I really don’t know what yahoo is trying to achieve but its really irritating 😐 ...

Here is a repository i use on my gutsy install which always contains the latest builds of Pidgin and Rhythmbox. So no more hunting for debs or compiling sources 😀 Steps to add the repository: 1. Open Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) 2. Type “gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list” 3. Go to the end of the file and add the following onto a new line: ## Latest Pidgin/Rhythmbox deb http://www.telemail.fi/mlind/ubuntu gutsy main 4. Save the file and close Gedit. ...

No changelog yet, ill update this thread as soon as i get debs. Though, since a month now, i have shifted to Ubuntu Gutsy. 🙂 Get it here.

You can easily get the vanilla Pidgin 2.0 .deb (installation file for Ubuntu Feisty). The only thing i was missing badly were the plugins! I was really used to the libnotify and autoreply plugins. Anyway, so i’ve compiled a .deb here for the Purple Plugin Pack. Plugins in the Plugin Pack Album Auto Accept Auto-rejoin Auto Reply awaynotify Bash.org Buddy Icon Tools Buddy List Options Buddy Note buddytime chronic convcolors Dice DiffTopic Magic 8 Ball Flip gRIM Group Message Hide Conversation IRC Helper Irssi Features Last Seen List Handler Marker Line My Status Box napster New Line Nick Said Offline Message Old Logger Plonkers Schedule Separate and Tab Show Offline Sim Fix Slash Exec SSL Info Stocker Switch Spell Talk Filters XMMS Remote XChat-Chats Edit: Thanks to Karthik, we have 64 bit debs for the plugin pack too! ...