Comments on: Review: Linux IM Software

By: someone else

someone else — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:33:24 +0000

Empathy supports “Contact is typing”, but I am not sure how many protocols they it works for. I think that they add a time stamp in the chat window when the other person closes his chat window.

They don’t support contact merging / metacontacts, and they don’t support “Away since”, but I personally don’t have many multiprotocol friend, so that has not a problem for me.

My only problem with empathy is that their IRC user interface is optimized for a different usage pattern than mine, so I tend to use gnome-xchat for IRC, when I really want to chat, and troll on many channels simultaneously.

By: someone else

someone else — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:14:04 +0000

I believe that empathy has an away feature, which is triggered by the screen saver, but I haven’t checked lately.

If I leave my empathy running at work, then then incoming messages are send to my empathy client at home. It works very well.

By: jldugger

jldugger — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:31:40 +0000

I’ve actually tried moving my IM systems to my Maemo phone on the theory that it better maps my availability than an idle pidgin client on my desktop at home. It solves your multi-signin problem but perhaps a bit brutishly.

The plus side: it’s a very slick interface. Seamlessly integrates SMS as well. The Telepathy UI is mostly divorced from the protocol, so adding new protocols appears to be fairly simple and popular. The contacts book supports merging various account data, including phone number.

Downside: most chat protocols don’t support decent whitelisting or spam filtering. This is nearly a deal breaker.

One thing I haven’t checked or thought about is busy status; the phone has access to busy/free calendars, so it might automatically set these based on your schedule.

By: Josh Triplett

Josh Triplett — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:49:17 +0000

Hmmm, true; I hadn’t really noticed, but indeed it doesn’t send an indication of window closure.

By: Michael Goetze

Michael Goetze — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:47:29 +0000

For me, IRC and XMPP are also the needed protocols, but with a bit more emphasis on IRC. My solution is to use irssi (running in a screen session on a server) and bitlbee (also running on the same server). While bitlbee doesn’t provide any advanced XMPP features, I don’t need to run multiple instances as I just connect to the same screen session from everywhere.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:49:39 +0000

bitlbee is indeed very interesting. I looked at it, but concluded that its interface wasn’t going to be quite what I was after, especially since IRC clients aren’t really set up to pop up notifications on certain events.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:41:03 +0000

That is correct. But the typing indicator is the *only* one it will send; it won’t sent the GONE (window closed) notification, for instance. It can receive and display them from the other end, but not send them from its end.

By: Eli L.

Eli L. — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:38:06 +0000

I’m a big fan of bitlebee (http://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.r.html).
None of the multi-client chat programs I tried could handle IRC well, so I instead went with screen + weechat/irssi and bitlbee as a gateway to AIM/jabber. I’ve heard of people doing an xchat/irssi-proxy/bitlbee setup as well.
It’s very convenient if you only need basic IM features, but otherwise not suitable since it doesn’t support video/audio/etc.

By: Josh Triplett

Josh Triplett — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:25:12 +0000

Current pidgin still seems to have a typing indicator, and if you enable the psychic mode plugin it will provide the typing indicator for people who haven’t yet sent the first message.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:21:41 +0000

Looked at it briefly. Had nowhere near enough Jabber features for me to even consider.

By: someone

someone — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:14:57 +0000

You missed the Telepathy-based one, Empathy.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:48:31 +0000

I still can’t use Kopete because it has no way to reduce priority when away. http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97998

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:44:10 +0000

Ah, I can get to it by right-clicking the dock icon. Weird that it’s nowhere else though.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:43:41 +0000

I’m not seeing any such icon — I’ve tried clicking everywhere I can think to try, and no luck.

By: Stefan Borggraefe

Stefan Borggraefe — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:38:17 +0000

Kopete has in fact all the features you think are missing from it. When you right click on the icon for the Jabber account in the lower area of the window, there is a menu item “Services…” which is used to discover services on Jabber servers. You can set the priority in the properties of a Jabber account.