Pidgin 2.6 Released, Brings Voice & Video

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Pidgin 2.6 Released, Brings Voice & Video

The Pidgin instant messaging program has been losing some ground recently to GNOME's Empathy program as more Linux distributions switch to using this newer instant messaging application. Pidgin 2.5 was released just under one year ago, but arriving today is Pidgin 2.6, which may help in winning over more users...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzQ2Ng

[Hoodlum]

Wtf. I never thought i'd see the day after the death of the gaim-vv project....

I wonder if this happened in light of empathy being chosen for all the major distros as the default im client?

[89c51]

i think empathy is based on libpurple (not 100% sure thought)

[krionius]

Great news! I hope to test it and that others will test it in spite of the new wave of empathy.

[SyXbiT]

it's unfortunate, but I've lost a lot of respect for the pidgin devs.
I remember them complaining about not wanting to do audio/video support, and how it wasn't a priority etc..

WELL, it looks like they're pulling a microsoft (i.e. improving something ONLY because the competition is beating you - like internet explorer)

It seems Pidgin has only improved because soon they won't be used anymore.
With Ubuntu switching to empathy (as default), that's a huge difference in market share

[kcheung]

it's unfortunate, but I've lost a lot of respect for the pidgin devs.
I remember them complaining about not wanting to do audio/video support, and how it wasn't a priority etc..

WELL, it looks like they're pulling a microsoft (i.e. improving something ONLY because the competition is beating you - like internet explorer)

It seems Pidgin has only improved because soon they won't be used anymore.

(Pidgin developer here)

That's not really true. The current VV work started as 2008's GSoC project, but since it's basically one guy's effort it just took a long time. Pidgin is almost entirely volunteer based, so people tend to work on things that they want to work on.

[Remco]

Nice! XMPP video is the only thing I need at the moment, since all those I regularly talk with are on Google Talk. Of course, Google Talk might use a different video protocol than XMPP... I read something about that.

i think empathy is based on libpurple (not 100% sure thought)

Empathy is based on Telepathy. It does have support for libpurple protocols (I think).

[some-guy]

Empathy is based on Telepathy. It does have support for libpurple protocols (I think).

If you install telepathy-haze, then yes

[kcheung]

Nice! XMPP video is the only thing I need at the moment, since all those I regularly talk with are on Google Talk. Of course, Google Talk might use a different video protocol than XMPP... I read something about that.

Google talk interoperability is still sort of hit-or-miss depends on what version of the dependent libraries you have. Using Ubuntu Jaunty and some packages from karmic I was able to view someones webcam who was using the windows web client, but the other side couldn't see mine. Audio seems to work too.

[Apopas]

Actually every distro is switching to empathy, because empathy has been chosen as the Gnome's default IM.