Well, you don't need all of gnome installed to use gaim. Just a few libraries, GTK, etc if I know anything. I personally don't have gnome desktop installed and still use gaim.

copy-cat : )

GAIM all the way. It has served me well in the past and continues to do so still Using 0.79

I ditched Gaim in favor of Kopete. I used Gaim essentially as a msn client, and Kopete seemed to be a better one at the time I switched. Kopete supported file transfers and portraits, neither of which were available on Gaim at the time.

Do any/all of these messengers connect simultaneously to any/all of the following...
1)msn
2)yahoo
3)aim
4)icq

and which ones have simplest/fastest file transfer?

Lots of reallt nice posts.
Keep it going people!


Jazzben: Both Gaim and Kopete can. However, I'm unable to get Gaim to work with MSN. IF you can, then it's a great program. I'm using Kopete for everything because Gaim won't work with MSN for me, and instead of going "ding" like it did before, it now does a system beep which is VERY annoying.

Gaim for msn, irc, icq and aim

mostly need msn and yahoo..... kopete?

Jazzben: Kopete works fine with MSN and Yahoo. Gaim is the better program, however it does not work out of the box with MSN. :-/

cool cheers, I think i'll grab kopete then while I'm still settling in to linux, maybe try gaim when i'm more familiar with the os
is it quite simple to upgrade gaim enough to support msn? and can I upload my contact lists easily for both of those programs/will they come up automatically same as msn/yahoo login?

In regards to your buddies and so on, they should come up automatically. They did for me, so I don't see why they won't for you.

In regards to upgrading Gaim. Well, SuSE comes with some pretty dated software. First of all you must install all the files necessary for Gaim to run with MSN. Then upgrade GTK from 2.2 to 2.4; not hard at all but about a 9mb download in total. Pretty hard on a 56k modem. :P
I'm still downloading the newer version of GTK. Then, last but not least, I've been told you must re-compile gaim 0.81

Not too hard, if that is all you're supposed to do, but on a 56k modem pretty long. I'll let you know how well it goes when i'm finished.

As a long time ex-windows user. and still am (and getting flamed by it). I have been addicted to the like of chat apps and IM's. So When ive switched to ./GNU linuz I was exiled from most of my friends bco's they all have yahoo accounts. And have Fancy Webcams and Voice Chat. Until ive found this App. Funny no one ever mentions this project... IMHO it has great support for Webcams and voice chat. At least it worked for me. I've just manage to install it from my RH 9 distro. And i'll try to make it work on others....

Believe it or not, I am using Miranda IM through Wine.

I like the customizability of Miranda more so than GAIM (when I tried the Windows port) but I might try out GAIM to get it working and see if it will let me keep my contacts separated, and various other things.

I use 4 MSN accounts, 2 ICQ, 1 yahoo and 1 AIM. from the docs re: Miranda, I can log in to MSN via the Jabber netowkr, but I want something that is gonig to work straight out. Plus, Mirnda has sooooo many plugins, that I am addicted to it now.

This is the VERY reason why I use Gaim. I don't think Kopete does this, nor any other Linux mutli-protocol client. I even used Gaim in Windows due to this feature as for me it's very important.

What do you mean it doesn't work out of the box. Just fill in the info and it works great

Gaim, SN is... LinuxBox420

SLACKWARE!